Spied and Seek
by dcdreamin
Summary: **Book 4 Spoilers** After Cammie leaves at the end of book Zach follows her, and the two of them search for their answers regarding the Circle of Cavan.
1. Chapter 1

_**AN: This is my first Fanfic! Please read and review. I don't really know where this story is going, so give suggestions! I do not own the Gallagher Girls characters. And the first two lines in Italics are by Ally Carter and are the last lines of Only the Good Spy Young**_

_And now…well…now I am going to sneak out of this mansion by myself one more time. Now I'm going to leave here, and spend this summer trying to find them. __I'll be back. And when I am, I promise I'll have answers._

I didn't wait until everyone had left the mansion. In fact, I did the exact opposite. I did what I'm good at.

After breakfast on the last day of term, when all the other girls were changing out of their uniforms and carrying their suitcases into the grand hall, I moved into the crowd. No one noticed me, and no one thought it strange that the headmistress' daughter was the only girl not lugging a suitcase down from her room. After all, it made perfect sense. If my mother was the last person to leave the mansion, why would I bother getting ready until everyone else was gone?

The secret to being a chameleon isn't hiding. It's getting other people to see you and keep looking. It's getting other people to find a perfectly good reason for why you _should_ be somewhere when _you_ know you shouldn't be. It's making everyone else think that you're harmless. It's something Gallagher Girls do every day.

So when the throngs of girls were making their ways through the halls, I was right there with them, making my way through a different hall. I slid the report from last semester, the one that explained what I was doing, on top of the case that held Gilly's sword. And then I made my way to the only remaining secret passage while Macey, Bex, and Liz were still packing.

I knew I couldn't say goodbye to them because I knew they would try to stop me, and that they would probably succeed. And then I'd spend another summer being protected from harm while other people searched for the answers I know I have to find. My mother was out of the question as well. She's the best spy I know, and not only would she have seen right through me, she'd never have agreed to my plan. She'd have stopped me before I could even get started. And I couldn't let that happen.

I agree with Aunt Abby. I don't do goodbyes.

It was raining outside at eleven hundred hours that Saturday. Actually the better phrase would be torrential downpour. I could barely see three feet in front of me when I emerged from the passage, and I was soaked to the skin in exactly six and a half seconds. I crouched down in the bushes along the road, sure that my dark clothes and the driving rain would keep me hidden from any approaching vehicles. Although I knew that anyone who was on the road in this weather would have to be as crazy as I was.

The rain pelted me in hard drops, and when I heard thunder roll in the distance, I regretted not bringing some sort of raingear. Maybe neon yellow doesn't make it easy to blend in, but I was pretty sure that catching pneumonia wouldn't do a lot of good either.

But something was wrong. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I spun in search of whoever was watching me. No one was there. No one at the mansion would miss me yet. My mother would still be preoccupied by the students who were leaving, and my friends would assume that I'd snuck off to avoid socializing, thinking I wanted to be alone after what had happened. And they'd be right.

But that didn't change the feeling, deep in my bones, that something was wrong. And if there's one rule as a spy, it's go with your gut. So I turned back to the road and began to search for an alternative hiding spot. And then a hand grabbed me.

His hand was over my mouth before I could react, but the first thing I did was slam my elbow back into his diaphragm. He gave a satisfying grunt, but his other arm wrapped around my waste, pulling me back into his body and taking away my leverage. And then a voice was whispering in my ear.

"Chill, Gallagher Girl. It's me."

I whipped my head around to face him, and he let me, all the while keeping my body close to his, as if he were afraid I would try to hurt him again. Or as if he liked having me that close.

"What are you _doing_ here?"

"You didn't honestly think I'd let you chase the Circle by yourself, did you?" he said, his lips brushing my ear in an attempt to diffuse my hostility. But I wasn't about to be calmed down.

"She's your mother, Zach," I shot back, managing to pull away from him and trying not to let myself see the hurt in his face at my words. "How can I trust you?"

"I don't know," he shrugged, his eyes honest for a change. "But I think you should."

"Why? You've spent the last year following me around and sending me cryptic messages and avoiding my questions," I snapped, doing my best not to let his betrayed face cool my anger. Of all the people to have followed me, it had to be the one who always had an advantage over me. It had to be the one who always knew more than I did.

"Because you can't do this alone. Because you need someone who knows the Circle from the inside. And because we want the same thing."

"Really Zach?" I asked sarcastically. "And what would that be?"

"Answers." His eyes searched my face, looking for some hint of what I was thinking, but I didn't give him anything. After all, I had gotten _something _out of five years of spy school. I tried to look away, but he placed his hand on my jaw, forcing me to meet his gaze.

"If you want to go alone, Cameron, you're going to have to fight me. And you're going to have to win."

I tried to ignore the way he used my full name for the first time ever. I tried to ignore the way his eyes bored into mine, the intensity in his face making my insides twist. And I tried to ignore the way his fingers lingered on my jaw, light but uncompromising all at the same time. But I couldn't.

"I don't think that's going to be necessary," I whispered.

He dropped his hand and moved away, and I almost wished I'd offered to fight him.

"Good," he answered, his voice surprisingly light. "Because I'm already drenched and I'm not really keen on being covered in mud too. I think this storm is turning Roseville into an official swamp."

"Don't worry Zach," I teased, trying to copy his lighter tone. "You're not that sweet. It's not like you'll melt or anything."

"You're right, Cammie," he said, his tone serious again. "I'm not."


	2. Chapter 2

"We can't stay here," I said, trying to figure out how we were going to get anywhere else. "They may not notice I'm gone just yet, but it won't take them that long."

"You're right," he nodded, taking my hand and pulling me to the south.

"Zach," I demanded. "Where are you taking us?"

"The interstate. You have a better idea?"

"We're going to hitch all the way to…where exactly are we going?"

"Let's worry about that later," he answered. "Right now we just need to get away from here."

After ten minutes of plodding through the thick goopy mud and driving rain, we found ourselves at a truck stop. Just about the most obvious place for us to be. Which meant we'd better make this fast.

"That one," Zach said, his eyes focused on a tall, bearded man in his fifties who was climbing into the cab of his truck. He grabbed my hand and pulled me after him, moving quickly toward the driver who was now in his truck and trying to shake the water off of his slicker by waving it out the truck window.

"Wait," I pleaded, as he hauled me after him. "What if he's Circle?"

"He's not." Zach shook his head. "And if he were, I think the two of us could take the one of him."

"Mind if we tag along?" He yelled up to the driver in a way that wasn't really a question. I mean really, he might as well have just said, 'We're tagging along,' for all the choice the driver had in the matter.

"Where you headed?" The man called back.

"Wherever you're going."

"Well, com'on then."

Zach moved to the other side of the cab, practically lifted me up (even though I was more than capable of getting into a truck by myself), and sandwiched me between himself and the trucker.

"Thanks," he smiled, pulling out all the stops for our newest travel companion. "It's wet as hell out there."

"That ain't no lie," the man drawled, shifting the truck into gear and guiding it back up the ramp. "Where y'all from?"

"Up north a ways," Zach answered, and I continued to let him speak for both of us, crafting a cover for the trucker. "Just south of Boston."

"Funny. You ain't got no accent."

"I actually didn't live there that long. But Callie grew up there, so hers is a lot stronger than mine. Right Baby?"

"Mhmm," I mumbled, pretending to be sleepy so I wouldn't have to fake a Boston accent. I wanted to hit Zach. Leave it to him to pick the one accent I had never been able to perfect. Although I doubted if the trucker would have noticed a flawed accent, even if it was more than a little off.

But my plan had its advantages too. So I leaned against Zach and pretended to be tired. And he put his arm around my shoulders and rested his head on mine. And at that moment, it didn't feel like a cover.

"Callie huh? What's your name, son?"

"Matt." My insides twisted at his response. He _would_ pick that name. But his fingers moved in circles on my shoulder, and I took it as a silent apology. "And thanks for driving us Mr…."

"Peters. Bob Peters."

The man turned and looked us over, and for a moment I thought I was going to have to reach over and totally break my cover to keep him from running the truck into the next lane of traffic, but he moved his eyes back to the road just in time and corrected his steering.

"Y'all are runaways, ain't ya?"

Zach was silent for a moment before muttering, "Yes, Mr Peters."

"Figured as much. I was one too, long ago." His eyes moved to us again, and I found myself wishing he would just watch the road. "You kids've thought this through, though, right?"

"Yes," Zach nodded.

"Know how you're gonna support yourselves, right?'

"Yes, Mr. Peters."

"Good, that's all good. Otherwise ya end up like me. But y'all seem too smart for that."

"Thanks, Mr. Peters."

"Wasn't a compliment, kid, it was a fact."

"Well thanks for driving us. Most people just don't understand."

"Ain't no matter. Hope y'all like Iowa. Though I guess if ya don't y'all can tag along 'till I get somewhere else. Ain't no matter at all."

And with that Mr. Peters turned his face to the windshield and I pressed my head into Zach's soaking shoulder. And despite the journey I was setting out on, despite the fact that I'd just left all my friends and family, despite not knowing where we were going or how we were going to get there, for one moment, I was happy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thanks to everyone who's reviewed or is following this! I'm really glad you guys seem to like it. Suggestions? Please let me know. Just a reminder, I do not own the Gallagher Girls.**

It wasn't raining at the truck stop in Iowa. That was the good news. But it was four in the morning local time. We'd been riding in the cab of the truck all night (which doesn't do anything for your hair, let me tell you). Our clothes were stiff from the rain. And there was only one tiny and very sketchy looking motel in the area.

I cringed as Zach took my hand and pulled me toward the office, and he laughed.

"What's the matter, Gallagher Girl?" He teased. "Too grungy for you?"

_Yeah, _I thought, but I wasn't about to tell him that. "Nope, it's just the place I was hoping for."

He laughed. "Sure," he answered sarcastically. "It looks like what you're hoping for is for a hazmat team to show up."

"That's about right," I smiled. "Now where _is_ my gas mask?"

"You're such a disgrace, Cammie," he smirked. "This place is a spy's dream. No one who will remember your face or your name in the morning and nothing to trace you by."

"I know that," I said quietly, rolling my eyes. "I chose this, remember?"

"Welcome to life on the run," Zach smiled. "But now we get to the best part."

"And what exactly is that?"

"You'll see, Gallagher Girl."

He dropped my hand and I watched him approach the tiny window and ask for a room, saw him pass over a few small bills and take a key. He turned and walked back to me, spinning the ring on the end of his finger.

"That guy is so trashed," he muttered. "He won't be able to tell anyone _his _name in the morning, let alone mine." He took my hand and led me toward the room that my observational skills had told me was the only vacant one. "Cmon, Gallagher Girl, we got the last room."

The room was gross. The sort of place where you're afraid to even breathe the air, let alone touch anything. And when I saw the color of the water that came out of the faucet, I decided a shower wasn't going to make me any cleaner.

"Why are we here again?" I asked.

"You mean why are we here instead of still out there running?"

"Yeah."

"Simple, Gallagher Girl. For one, we're farther under the radar. Fewer people can run into us and identify us later. For another, I'm tired. You may have slept in the truck last night, but I didn't."

I glanced at the one double bed in the center of the room and blinked hard. Maybe I'd just stand in the middle of the floor all night. Zach, however, had no qualms about flopping down on the disease-ridden comforter. He stared at me standing in the middle of the room for a few moments, then folded his arms and closed his eyes. I looked warily at the floor.

"I'm not gonna make you sleep on the floor, Gallagher Girl. Trust me, it's worse down there than up here. I tested it once as an experiment."

"When?"

"The fall of the campaign."

"You mean the fall when you were stalking me."

"No, I mean the fall when I was trying to protect you." I didn't have a response for that, so I just stayed where I was in the center of the room, standing awkwardly in the silence. "Cam, come here," he said finally. "I swear I won't try anything or whatever it is you're afraid of. Just stop standing there, it's driving me nuts."

"In a good way, or a bad way?" I asked, trying to flirt and sounding totally cheesy. But he didn't seem to think so. He swallowed hard and I saw him tense for a second.

"Both. Would you just come over here? I promise the comforter won't kill you. I've slept in places that were way worse than this." He opened his eyes and smirked up at me. "With worse company too."

"Does that mean I beat Joe Solomon as a roommate?" I teased, trying to lighten the mood. But it seemed that every time I tried to relax, Zach would suddenly be serious, and I found myself really missing Liz, with her prototype boy-to-English translator, Macey, with her boy interpretations (she didn't need a translator), and Bex, with her tendency to kick any boy's butt whether or not she knew what he was saying.

Zach raised his eyes to meet mine, his gaze intense. "Yeah," he whispered, in a way that made the girl portion of my brain hard to ignore. And then he smiled, teasing again. "Although Joe wouldn't have cared about how gross the motel was or that there was only one bed. He never got accustomed to the accommodations at your school, Gallagher Girl. Way too nice for the average spy."

But his words made something twist in me. And that something was guilt. "Do you think he'll make it?" I asked, hoping that if Zach tell me everything would be fine it would be easier to convince myself. But even though we lie a lot as spies, we have to be realistic. We have to be prepared for the worst.

I watched as Zach closed his eyes again and leaned his head back against the wall. "I don't know, Cammie," he whispered, his voice pained. "I try not to think anymore."

I nodded in understanding, and then I moved over to the bed and sat down next to him. His fingers found mine and squeezed them hard, and I squeezed back because I knew. I knew how it felt to not know how you were going to make it through the next day. I knew how it felt to wonder what you could have done to change things. And I knew how it felt to lose someone you love.


	4. Chapter 4

I woke up three hours later with Zach's arm around mine, but almost as soon as I opened my eyes he moved away. He looked asleep, and he sounded asleep, but I'm a spy so I knew better.

"So what's the plan," I asked, rolling over to face him.

"God, Cammie, way to ruin my entirely too short nap."

"Knock it off," I teased. "We have a job to do. And you were totally awake."

"Damn, Gallagher Girl, I forgot you were a spy."

"So what's the plan?"

"How would I know?'

"You know the Circle," I snapped. "Or at least you _said _you knew the circle." Yes, I was angry. Of course I was angry. Zach said he knew the Circle. He said he could help. He said I needed him. At least he was right about one of the three, albeit the least helpful one. But I was still annoyed, so I got up, stomped to the tiny window, forced myself to touch the horrific blinds, and stared out.

"Cam…" he said, sitting up on the bed and staring at me. I ignored him. And that really made me miss my friends. Guys can be nice every once in a while, but when you really need something done it's your sisters you have to count on. I wondered, for a moment, if I'd made the right choice. But then I pictured Liz cutting her nose with a paper clip. I saw Macey, standing by the lake with a cast on her arm. And I imagined Bex, so brave that she put herself into really dangerous situations by complete accident.

And then I knew I'd made the right choice. There was no way I would expose my sisters to the Circle. They'd taken too much from me already, and I wasn't about to hand over my friends willingly. Zach was right. The two of us were the only people they'd think twice about killing.

"_Cam._"

"What?" I snapped, turning to face him. "You said you would help me find some answers. You said I could trust you."

"For God's sake, Cameron Morgan, shut up." And then he was in front of me, with his hands on my shoulders and his face close to mine. His eyes met mine, inches away. "Is this the only way I can make you stop talking?"

His words caught me so off-guard that I fell silent, and unfortunately, he took that for a 'no'.

"Cam, my mother doesn't tell me everything. She lies a lot, and sometimes it's hard to sift out the truth. Yeah, I "know" a lot about the Circle, but the question is whether or not what I "know" is true or if she fed that information to me thinking that someday this might happen.

"This is dangerous, Gallagher Girl. This is what they want us to do. We're playing _their _game now. So we have to be smart. We have to play it better than them. Or we die." His fingers brushed my cheek at his words. "And I don't want that to happen."

"I want answers too, you know. Joe was great to me after my dad…disappeared. They wanted your dad's journal so badly that they nearly killed one of their most trusted operatives to get it. I want to know why. I need to know why. Even if just to convince myself that it wasn't my fault. And I need to know why they want you so badly.

"You think you want answers, Cam? What about me? Do you think I don't want to bring down the organization that keeps trying to kill the people I love?"

He broke eye contact and turned away, putting his hands in his pockets and staring at the wall. And I didn't know how to respond. I'd seen Zach angry. I'd seen Zach indifferent. But I'd never really seen him vulnerable and I didn't know what to do. So I asked a question I'd been wondering for a long time.

"Zach, what happened to your dad?" I whispered.

"I don't know," he said, his voice emotionless again. I was amazed that he answered at all.

"He was a spy?"

"Probably," he shrugged. "She won't ever talk about him. At all."

"How old were you?"

He shrugged again. "Young."

"Do you think he's still alive?"

I watched him stand in silence for a few moments before he silently shook his head. And then I walked over and took his hand.

"I can feel it," he whispered. "I know it, deep down. And yet…"

"There's that tiny part of your brain that keeps hoping."

He turned to me, and his eyes locked with mine as he smiled sadly and nodded. And then he kissed me, sweet and gentle, like he was afraid he would hurt me or scare me away. But also like he was afraid that he wouldn't get the chance to ever do it again.

**So what do you think? Are the dad's still alive? Review and help me out! And thanks for reading **


	5. Chapter 5

After Zach left our key on the front desk of the motel (the man who'd been working was passed out) we started to walk. At first we didn't know where we were going, we just moved, placing one foot in front of the other along the road. It's funny how if you look like a tramp everyone leaves you alone. Even in the middle of Iowa.

Neither one of us knew what to do. There were too many questions we couldn't answer, too many things we didn't know. And we had to know. So we just kept walking, hoping that we'd find something, anything, to point us in the right direction.

"We're such fools," I muttered as we walked, three hours later. "We don't have a clue what we're doing. What were we thinking Zach, thinking we could find them?"

"Cam," he said slowly. "What would you say if I told you we weren't just walking around aimlessly?"

"I'd say 'Why the hell didn't you tell me that three hours ago?"'

"That's kinda what I thought."

He quickened his pace and walked faster, falling silent in a way that really bugged me, but also told me that we _were _in fact walking toward something. He just wouldn't tell me what. So I matched my stride with his and examined his face, taking in his fierce and determined expression.

"Where are we, Zach?" I asked finally, as we neared the top of a hill.

"Iowa," he answered, coming to stop before an old mailbox with the name "Wilkes" scrawled on the side of it. I shot him a questioning and slightly (okay, more than slightly) irritated look, and fortunately he answered me. "My...mother grew up here."

It was funny, the way he had difficulty admitting that she was connected to him, and I wondered once again how much he knew and wasn't saying, how much he'd contributed to the anti-Circle efforts already, and how much he'd sacrificed to keep me safe. And then I heard his words in my head, from long ago. _"I'm someone who has doesn't have anything to lose."_

And I knew it wasn't true. Because watching Zach stand at the end of the long overgrown driveway, I knew he had more to lose than I did. _I _knew my father was a good spy, a good person. That he…disappeared trying to make the world a better place. And I knew my mother hadn't played a part in his death. But Zach didn't. Zach didn't know anything.

It's one thing to have suspicions, to spend years figuring out how it could have gone. But it's completely different to have them confirmed, to find evidence so irrefutable it leaves no question as to what happened or who was at fault. And that's the scariest thing of all.

So I took Zach's hand in mine, and he lifted his eyes from the mailbox to meet my gaze.

"I don't know what's waiting for us up there, Gallagher Girl. If I were them, I'd have staked out every location connected in any way to what my enemies were searching for. I can't tell you they haven't done that. And I'd like you to stay here."

"I'm a spy too, Zach. And I think you need me to come. I'm not sending you in without backup. Besides, we've already determined that they don't want me dead."

"Yet," he whispered. "There's got to be something that they think you know. And when they find what they're looking for…"

He didn't have to finish his sentence. I knew the drill. Torture, information, death. Story of a spy's life. I knew the stakes. I'd always known the stakes. And I'd chosen to play the game anyway. Maybe moving my piece across the board wasn't going to save it, but if I left it where it was I'd lose it for sure.

So I slid into the brush along the driveway, searching for motion sensors and tripwires and cameras, all the time watching my adept partner out of the corner of my eye. All the time watching the dilapidated farmhouse grow larger on the horizon. And all the time feeling like someone was watching me.

**So who do you think is watching Cammie? Sorry there's a little less Zammie in this one, but don't worry there will be more. Hope you enjoy!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing. I get so excited when my email is full of fanfiction notifications. This one is longer, enjoy :)**

Zach caught my eye from the other side of the driveway, and we darted across the space to the side of the house, pressing close up against it. He stood sweating beside me for a moment, his eyes more nervous than they should have been. It was just another infiltration. Another op. But we both knew it was more than that.

"Camera, west wall, moving slowly. Passes in 3, 2…"

He grabbed my arm and pulled me down to crouch in the grass beside him, waited for a few seconds, then stood and moved to the back of the house where there was a door. A door with a numeric keypad.

His eyes met mine, and I knew we were thinking the exact same thing. If an advanced encryption panel was on the back door, why was there only one old and inefficient security camera? What other measures had been put in place? How many had we already set off? And were our enemies coming now, bearing down on us as we hesitated? There was only one way to find out, and that was to answer our final question. What was behind the door?

I slipped out my no-longer-in-service cell phone, quickly attached a wire between the phone and the keypad, and ran Liz's code-cracking smart-phone app. The door was unlocked in less than three seconds, leaving Zach looking slightly awestruck.

"She really is good, isn't she?" I just nodded in response. And then I opened the door and was instantly confronted by…nothing. Which was the scariest thing possible. Alarms we can deal with. Enemy operatives we can deal with. But you can't fight silence. You can't fight empty space. And not knowing what might jump out at you is hard. Because the hardest thing in the world to fight is fear.

We instantly set to work, searching through the clutter of what appeared to be an average house for something meaningful. We didn't speak for fear of being bugged, but we watched each other across the room. And we listened, waiting for approaching sounds of any kind that might signal we had company.

And then I found it. A tiny switch under a San Francisco coffee mug. A switch that, when I pressed it, slid open a compartment on the shelf above. It was tiny, the same size as a piece of paper, and no deeper than the shelf. And in it was one file folder. So I did what any self-respecting spy would do. I took it.

And then I heard the footsteps, quiet, the way a spy's would be. Two pairs, moving cautiously in our direction. Zach's eyes found mine.

"Hide," he whispered frantically. "They can't know we're together."

And for once I believed him. I slipped quickly into the back bedroom and hid under the bed, waiting for the noises of a fight in the next room. But strangely, they didn't come right away.

"Well, if it isn't Zach Goode," the voice was vaguely familiar and brought back the image of that horrible night in the cave. But I pulled myself together and listened closely.

"Well if it isn't one of my mother's goons."

"What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing, but I'm not going to."

"And where is she?"

"Cammie? Wherever the government hid her this time. Which you're probably already aware of."

"Then you don't know?"

"Know what?"

"That she ran."

"That sounds like exactly the kind of stupid self-sacrificing thing she would do."

_Thank you Zach, _I thought, my blood beginning to boil. _Thank you very much for your support. _Sure it was fine for him to run away from school, to join the task force to take down the Circle, but as soon as I tried to take my fate into my own hands I was being stupid and self-sacrificing. Hypocrite.

"Your mother will be glad to see you again," the man said, and I could hear the smirk in his voice. "Alive and well as always."

"That won't be happening."

"You can't escape us, Zach. Didn't Matthew Morgan and Joe Solomon teach you that? Once a member of the Circle, always a member of the Circle. And you in particular know far too much."

"But not enough," he answered. "Otherwise you wouldn't be looking for Cammie."

And then I heard the noises of a fight as Zach and the guard struggled. The thumping, crashing, groaning noises of a fight. And then I heard a body hit the floor. And it sounded too heavy to be his.

The back door swung open, and Zach began to struggle with the second man who was, judging by the noises, obviously stronger than the first. I tried to wait, really I did. But the seconds were ticking by, and it sounded like Zach was losing. So I decided to help him out. I slipped back toward the foyer, passing through the kitchen and grabbing a heavy candlestick along the way. And then I just sort of whacked him on the head. And he just sort of fell forward.

"Damn it, Cammie, I told you to hide."

"You were losing."

"No, I was psyching him out. Letting him think he was winning so when I turned he'd be unprepared. Now he'll know I wasn't alone."

"Only if he remembers," I commented.

"And he'll go back and tell them all," Zach ignored me. "And they'll know you're with me. Which makes this so much more dangerous."

"Sorry."

"Sorry isn't good enough," he said, stepping closer. "Don't you see? Don't you get it? This is not a game, Cammie, this is real. You could…"

"You don't have to tell _me _what could happen," I snapped, cutting him off. "I've already lived that. Do you think I have any doubts about what happens when spies get caught? Do you?" It took all of my self-control to keep the tears from escaping and turning me into a normal person. So I turned away, desperate not to let Zachary Goode make me cry.

I felt his hand on my shoulder, gentle and tentative, and his voice whisper, "I'm sorry, Cam." I felt his fingers tighten around my shoulder, as he added in a slightly pained voice, "I just don't want to lose you." Then he stepped away, looked at the two men on the floor and turned back. "Now let's get out of here while we still can."


	7. Chapter 7

**Thanks for all the reviews, guys. I have the best readers :) Hope you like it.**

It wasn't until hours later, as we were walking along a road in the middle of nowhere after taking a greyhound bus out of Iowa, that I really thought about the conversation I'd overheard. I know that makes me sound like a bad spy, but we were so focused on getting away that we didn't have time to think about anything else. Not where we were going, or what had been said, or what was in the folder I'd stolen. At least I didn't.

But as we walked along the shoulder of the empty road in the dim light of the setting sun, I thought for the first time. And then I regretted it. I thought about the way the man had spoken about the Circle. _You can't escape us, Zach. Didn't Matthew Morgan and Joe Solomon teach you that? Once a member of the Circle, always a member of the Circle._

When I thought about it, I realized his words meant a lot of things, all of which were bad. First, and surprisingly least alarming, my father had been a member of the Circle with Joe Solomon. God knew how long he was with them before he and Mr. Solomon decided to take them down. I tried not to think about that.

But there was something else. Agents who changed sides were hunted down and killed, that much was obvious. But no one had come to hunt down Zach yet. And no one was allowed to kill him that night in the caves, even though he'd obviously been turned. Joe Solomon had been tortured for information, used one last time to help the Circle. Which left me wondering what their plan was for Zach. Was the Circle plotting to use him one last time? Against me?

And that brought me back to the question of why they wanted me in the first place. They needed information, something they couldn't get without me. And then I wondered. What if my father hadn't given them the information they wanted before he died? And what if they thought he'd passed that information on to me?

"Zach," I started, as soon as it hit me. "They don't want me. They want my father."

He stopped so suddenly that I nearly ran into him, and when he turned to face me, his eyes were furious. But in a way that told me I was right.

"He and Mr. Solomon were both Circle agents who changed sides. They tried to get the information out of my father, but he wouldn't tell them, would he? So they killed him. And whatever it is they're looking for, they think I have it."

His gaze held mine for a moment too long, and then his fingertips slowly traced down my cheek, playing with an escaped strand of hair.

"Oh my God," he muttered, closing his eyes and pulling away as though he had been burned.

"What?" He didn't answer, but he did turn and walk farther away from the road. Then he sat down on a rock and buried his head in his hands. I sat down next to him. "What, Zach?" I tried to reach for his hand, but he moved it away. So I stared at him until he slowly raised his eyes to meet mine.

"She killed him," he whispered, his voice shaky in a way I'd never heard before.

"I thought we knew that," I said, trying to figure out why the fact that the Circle killed my father was news.

"I mean personally." His voice cracked as he spoke, and a piece of my heart almost cracked as I listened. "I remember hearing her talk about it."

I tried to be unemotional, but I couldn't. After all, I'd just learned that my (sort of) boyfriend's mother killed my dad. I tried to be angry at Zach, but I couldn't. This was the boy (man?) who'd risked his life for me on numerous occasions. He couldn't help what his mother was. So I stayed silent, waiting for his story.

"It was late one night when I was supposed to be asleep, five or six years ago, long after my own father disappeared. I could hear her talking in the other room, but I couldn't determine who owned the other voice. She said, "He's dead," and the other man asked if she had the information. She told him she didn't and he was angry. And then she said she thought he might have given it to someone else, his daughter perhaps. Someone no one would think to go after.

And then she said, "And what about Joe?" and the man told her the right time would come. He said, "Joe will serve his purpose the way Alex served his. And the way Matthew was supposed to." And then he said, "Watch the girl. She's no threat now, but as she grows she'll become more and more dangerous to us. And someday she'll finish Matthew's job.""

"I'm sorry Cam," he said, shaking his head desperately. "I tried to block out what I heard her say for a long time. I didn't realize how useful it could be until about a year ago. I should have known earlier."

"Zach," I said quietly, waiting until he met my eyes to continue. "I don't blame you at all for what happened. It's what we do now that matters. Mr. Solomon would have said the same thing."

I saw Zach swallow hard, then close his eyes and focus.

"What was in the folder, Cam?" he asked. I'd been wondering when he would get to that. I slid it slowly from my drawstring backpack and balanced it on my lap, and we both leaned closer so that we could see more clearly in the fading light. And I felt Zach's arm slide around my waste.

I opened the folder and my breath caught as I thumbed through the glossy sheets. Full page, sharp, detailed, surveillance photos. The first was of my father and Mr. Solomon shaking hands, an unoriginal but well played brush pass. The next was Mr. Solomon, sitting on a bench. Then one of my father sitting on the same bench.

Zach stayed still until I reached the final photograph, one of my father with another man, a man I didn't recognize. And then he sucked in his breath and his arm tightened around my waste.

"Who is that?" I asked, barely moving my lips. But I wasn't surprised when he told me. In fact, I almost knew what he was going to say before the words slipped from his barely parted lips.

"Alexander Goode," he breathed. "Cam, that's my father."


	8. Chapter 8

**I wrote this late last night, so if it doesn't make sense I'm completely and totally sorry. But I think it's okay, and I hope you all like it :) Thanks for reading.**

"What does that mean?"

"It means," Zach said slowly, quietly. "It means my father…was trying to take down the Circle. And that he's dead. And that…" his voice trailed off, and I gripped his hand. "And that she probably killed him."

"Zach," I started, but he wouldn't let me finish.

"No, Cam," he said, shooting me a fake smile. "It's okay. I always wondered. I always suspected that…that it was her."

But I knew it wasn't okay. Because I'd never known Zachary Goode to have difficulty getting his words out, and he was now, which had to mean that he was more upset than he was letting on. And I felt sorry for him.

"Maybe they're not dead," I offered. "They failed to kill Mr. Solomon, and she said my father was alive. For all we know…"

"She's one of us, Cam. She lies. They're dead. They have to be. And she killed them both. And almost killed Joe, too."

"But what if…"

"Cam, I heard her," he yelled, before reconsidering and lowering his voice. "I heard her say he was dead. And that she killed him."

"But think Zach," I said, unwilling to be silenced. "If you had someone you wanted information from, someone who wasn't cooperating, no matter how much you tortured them, what would you do?"

His eyes met mine, and I saw the understanding there as his fingers cupped my face and pulled my head against his chest. But I wasn't about to let him off this easy. I was a spy after all.

"What would you do, Zach?" I asked persistently. "How would you get them to talk?"

The answer was obvious, he just didn't want to admit it. But when I asked again, his arms tightened around me and he whispered the words I'd been waiting for. Words that were clearly painful for him.

"Torture someone they love."

"Exactly," I nodded. "Maybe they don't think I have the information. Maybe they're just trying to get it from him."

"It's been almost six years, Cam," he said sadly. "That's a long time to wait."

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

"I think six years would qualify it as frozen solid."

"You're right," I said, reaching for the envelope between us. "Which means that I'm wrong. Or that whatever they wanted from my father was very important."

"Crucial to the survival of the Circle. That's the only possibility. But what was he doing with my father? And why wasn't _he_ in the journals?"

I think back to my father's and Mr. Solomon's journals, the ones we'd spent countless hours searching for, the ones we'd nearly been killed in pursuit of less than two months ago.

"Maybe because he was so much closer to the fire," I suggest. "Or maybe because he died before they really got anywhere. There could've been a million reasons."

"Like that his entire life, from his job to his wife to his kid, was a cover to bring him closer to the Circle leaders? And any suspicion, however small, would have brought the entire operation crashing down around their heads."

"Zach, don't say that," I said, sensing the resentment in his voice. "I'm sure he…"

"You're sure he what, Cammie? You're sure he actually loved my mother the terrorist? You're sure he actually wanted a kid? Get real, Cam. We're spies. Everything is a lie."

"Which means exactly what, Zach?" I snapped back. "That you talked me into following you around the country so that, when I finally began to trust you, you could hand me over to the Circle?"

"Cam, no, it's not like that…" He tried to touch me, but I wouldn't let him, tried to move closer but I pulled away.

"You just said that everything was a lie. So what was your plan, Zach? Now you've got me curious. We've been alone for three days. Why didn't you just hand me over while you had the chance?"

"Because I'm not my father, Cam," he whispered, clearly hoping it would be more effective and less conspicuous than shouting. "I didn't get close to you for the mission. There is no mission. I was never given orders regarding a mission involving you. Orders about stealing a disk of Gallagher Alumni, maybe. But never about you."

"The alumni disk sophomore year was you?" I asked, astonished.

"Sort of. That was my assignment when I arrived at your school, but Joe was trying to help me get out of the Circle. He arranged the final exam to mirror my assignment, hoping that the Circle wouldn't kill me if they didn't think the failure of the mission was entirely my fault."

"Did they know he'd been turned?'

Zach nodded. "And he knew that they knew," he said. "I think he'd known for a while, actually. Probably since about the time he came to teach at Gallagher. I suspect that he knew the Circle was planning something and took up teaching to be close to you. Which I suppose would add a little credibility to your theories."

"If there's one thing we know about the circle, it's that they wait to use people until the opportune moment, wait to seek revenge until it most benefits them. If they knew about my father, they probably knew about yours. And if they knew about your father, they probably knew about Joe. And we know they know about me."

"So what are they waiting for this time? What do they want from you, Zach?"

"Oh my God," he breathes, as though the answer has only just occurred to him. "They want me to lead you to them. They knew where I would go, knew which locations from my past I would revisit. And they planted information there that would lead us to them. Look at the photos," he said, and I spread them out like a fan in my hand.

"Of all of the surveillance photos for my mother to keep in her parents' house, why these particular ones? The Circle must have had thousands of them. Why these?"

"Because they clearly link your father to mine and my father to Mr. Solomon," I answered.

"Exactly. They've just made the first move, Cam, trying to lure us into playing their game. Offering us information that makes us think twice and want to search for the answers. But there's something they don't know yet."

"What's that?" I asked. He smiled and kissed me lightly before answering.

"We're not going to play by their rules."


	9. Chapter 9

**Sorry this one is so much shorter. Thanks for the reviews everyone. Starting college today, so updates could be few and far between but I will try my best. And thanks for reading :)**

"So what do you suggest?" I asked, as we walked along the road in the dark. "We still need information."

"Exactly," Zach answered, his eyebrows scrunched. "We're still going to have to hunt for it, too. It's just that we have to remember that anything we find of theirs is tainted, meant to manipulate us, to bring us closer to them."

"So we have to find the truths in their lies."

"No Cam," he answered. "We have to find the lies in their truths. What was a lie about those surveillance photos? What were they trying to make us see that wasn't real?"

I closed my eyes and thought. And that's when I realized he was right. There was nothing wrong with the photos. Absolutely nothing. Which in itself meant that something was off, because your enemies don't just hand you the information you're searching for.

"Unless the connections aren't real," I said finally. He glanced over and nodded for me to continue. "All of those photos, to a normal person, would seem completely innocent. But because we're spies we saw a brush pass and a fallout and a partnership."

"I think you're right," he agreed. "They took standard surveillance shots of Joe and your father, who we already knew were connected, and threw in a random shot of our fathers together, so that we would assume they were connected as well."

"Which means they probably weren't. Which means your father might not be dead, and your mother might not have killed him."

"Yeah, I guess," he said slowly. "But Cam…even if my dad wasn't working with yours…I'm still pretty sure he's dead. And I'm still pretty sure she killed him."

"We need to find out. We need to hack into the agency databases."

"You think I haven't tried that?" He snapped back. "What kind of spy do you think I am?"

"I mean way in," I said. "We need to reach the files that are so classified almost no one has ever seen them."

"And how would you suggest we do that?"

I almost answered him before I realized I was missing three valuable members of my team. Three members I missed very much.

I shook my head. "I don't know, Zach. Unless we start with the lower levels, see what basic information we can find, and go from there. Maybe we don't need details on every one of your father's missions, maybe we just need a few pieces we can put together."

"Cam, do you really think I haven't looked up my father in all these years?"

"How much do you know?"

"Not much," he admitted. "I'm not the world's greatest computer hacker."

"Anything helpful?"

"If there was, don't you think I would have told you about it?"

"Tell me everything you know," I demanded. "Just because it didn't seem important to you doesn't mean I won't connect it to something. You're not the only one who's done this before."

"Alexander Nicholas Goode. Born 3-29-1967 in Reno, Nevada. Enrolled at Blackthorne Institute for Boys 5-26-1979. Contracted 2-12-1985. Current status: Missing. Spouse Caroline Wilkes, employee of the Department of Defense, current status: Missing. Offspring, Zachary James Goode, born 9-4-1992, previously enrolled at Blackthorne Institute for boys, current status: Missing."

He fell quiet, waiting for my response. So I said the first thing that came to my mind.

"That was all you got?"

"Really, Cam, I doubt if you could have done any better."

"Let's see about that. I've been Liz's roommate for five years. Trust me, I know a few of her tricks."

"Fine." He took a small blackberry from his pocket and pressed it into my hand. "Remotely access the CIA's mostly secure database from this cell phone and see what you can come up with."

_You've got to be kidding me, _I thought. But I wasn't about to let Zach win. I'd hack into the CIA's database if it killed me. Which, knowing how advanced the systems Liz had sold them were, was entirely possible.

"Can they trace this?"

He shrugged and kept walking. "Probably."

"Is it a secure line?"

"No." He didn't even glance over his shoulder at me, but I could tell from the tone of his voice that there was no turning back. And he wouldn't have given me the phone if he'd been afraid of what might happen if I used it. So I did.

I was in within the hour, using my knowledge of Liz's system and my slightly better than average hacking skills (hey, if you live with someone long enough they rub off on you). On the first level was Zach's father's name and the dates Zach had recited, on the second was the information about his family. And on the third level I found new information.

I quickened my pace until I was at Zach's side. "Operative Alex Goode. Date of disappearance: 1-19-1998. Possibly turned by the Circle of Cavan. Presumed dead."

"Not bad," Zach shrugged. "Although that doesn't really tell us anything. What can you do with level four?"

With a lot of effort, I managed to break through Liz's fourth level of security. I turned to tell Zach what I'd found, but before I could say a word, the trees above us began to move violently. And the motion was accompanied by the unmistakable sound of helicopter blades.


	10. Chapter 10

**Two updates for the price of one today :) Just because I love you guys. (And because the second one is really short). And no, I am not majoring in writing.**

I dropped to the ground instinctively and felt Zach crouch down beside me. I could almost feel the tension coursing through him as he tried to find a plan, as he searched frantically for a way out. But the chopper was coming down fast, a special model of the agency's that had knife like blades enabling it to land anywhere, even in the middle of a forest.

And I felt the fear grip me, because the chopper was on the ground now, and we had very few options. We could run, but we wouldn't get very far, we could stay hidden, but they would find us. We could try to fight, but that would only call more attention to our identities. This time, there _was _no way out.

But Zach stayed calm, so I pulled myself together and mirrored his expression. And then the blades stopped spinning. And three far too familiar figures climbed out of the helicopter.

I felt Zach's hand grip my shoulder, reminding me that even though these were my best friends, we were still in a dangerous situation. So I met his eyes and nodded, then slunk through the bushes in their direction.

I waited until I was directly behind Liz before I let them see me, then I stood up, slapped a hand over Liz's mouth because I knew she would scream, and waited for them to recognize me. But Bex had me on the ground and in a headlock before that could happen.

"Bex," I whispered as best I could (she was cutting off my air, after all). "It's Cammie. Chill."

Her hold loosened slightly and she craned her head around to look at me. Then she met my eyes with a glare and hauled me to my feet. And then she got angry.

"What the bloody hell did you think you were doing?"

"Rebecca, if you're a little louder, they'll hear you in DC, and then our _entire_ operation will be blown," Zach said, coming to stand behind me, his hand resting on the small of my back. "So if you want the Circle to get Cammie, by all means, keep it up."

"I'll deal with you later," she snarled, her voice a whisper but no less fierce.

"I call next," Macey added, in a way that was far more threatening than I knew she was capable of. But I knew we weren't safe, that their helicopter would have attracted attention, so I tried to explain.

"I knew if I told you, you would stop me or try to follow and I didn't want any of you getting hurt, so I just left because I knew that if I stayed I'd spend another summer being protected and not getting any closer to making it stop and I need to know the truth." I'd gotten it all out in one breath because I'd expected that they would cut me off if I hesitated, so I was incredibly alarmed when I finished my giant run-on sentence and no one spoke. Not for a solid five seconds.

"You could have said 'Goodbye'," Liz whispered, breaking the eerie stillness. "I mean what if…"

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye, and I pulled away from Zach and hugged her. "I know," I said, swallowing hard. "But if I'd said goodbye, you wouldn't have let me leave."

Zach cleared his throat. "Umm…I hate to interrupt you, ladies, but we need to move. I'd guess that the government's probably noticed that Rebecca stole a trial helicopter, and while her flying was commendable…"

"Shut it, Goode," Bex snapped. "We didn't steal it, we were testing it."

"And since when do they let teenagers test million dollar machines?" Zach asked skeptically.

"Since Liz was able to get the van up to 300 mpg and they hired her to make their super secret choppers more fuel efficient." Her eyes met Zach's with a look that clearly said, 'Take that and stuff it somewhere.'

"I'm sorry," I whispered back, looking at the others over Liz's head.

"I'm sorry we made you feel as though we wouldn't respect your plan," Macey said. "I know what it's like having people second guess you all the time. It's _your _life Cam. If you said you needed to do this alone, we should have been willing to believe you."

"Can I just ask one thing," Bex said, narrowing her eyes. "If you wanted to do this alone, why is _he _here?"

"I forced myself on her," Zach said with a shrug. "Much as you would have done if you'd had a chance."

I rolled my eyes. If he was looking for a fight, sooner or later, Bex was going to give it to him. "Zach knows more about the Circle than any of us do," I offered, trying to calm the waters. "And we're the two people they need something from, the two people they'll think twice about killing."

But then I looked around at the five of us and I knew it couldn't stay like this. Two people could disappear together with a little effort, but five? It would be impossible. So I told them.

"Guys, you can't stay with us," I said slowly, each word cutting me like a knife. "It would be too dangerous."

Macey nodded. "We know," she said. "That's why we brought these." She tossed me a nylon sack that contained two round electronic devices. "Tell them, Liz."

For the first time since she'd arrived, Liz smiled. Then she started speaking in science jargon. And I may be fluent in several languages, but Science isn't one of them.

"Sorry," she apologized when I asked her to pick a language I could understand. "I invented these special communication devices that operate on their own highly encrypted network and can't be traced by anyone who doesn't have one. They make a secure line, but you can't talk on them, you can only text. I'm working on that," she frowned, " but this is only my 43rd prototype."

"So you can still communicate with us and we can still help you but no one will know that we're helping you or where any one of us is," Bex chimed in.

"Speaking of," Zach started. "How did you find us tonight?"

"When you break into the third level of security in the database it starts a trace sequence," Liz smiled. "It sends all those notifications to me, as system administrator."

"And it just happened that we were at a base nearby when one of you triggered the alarm."

Zach rolled his eyes at me. "Good going, Gallagher Girl."

"Shut up, Zach."

"Well from now on, you won't have to hack the database, Cam," Liz said, excited. "I can do it for you!"

"We should go," Bex said, glancing at the others and failing to meet my eyes. They'll be wondering where we are back at base."

"So if Liz is the scientist, that would make you two what?" Zach asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Her bodyguards and pilot," Macey answered, her voice cool. "The helicopter would be attractive to many nations and terrorist groups around the world."

"Bye Cam!" Liz said, hugging me.

"Be careful," I pleaded. And then I leaned close and breathed her first assignment into her ear. "Alex Goode." She nodded and climbed back onto the waiting chopper.

"See ya, Cam," Macey said, with an apologetic look.

Bex nodded vaguely in my direction, then climbed into the chopper and brought the engine to life without a word. And as I stood there in the dark, watching the blades grow faster and the helicopter move farther away, I wondered if there was any way the knowledge I might gain would be worth as much as the person I'd lost. Somehow, I didn't think so.


	11. Chapter 11

As soon as the chopper disappeared, we started jogging along the road. It was night, which meant no one was around to find our amount of energy disturbing, and it moved us further from where the helicopter had landed faster. And it was harder for my thoughts to keep up.

We ran in silence for the first half mile, me thinking and Zach letting me think. But exactly when we reached the half mile mark, he began to speak.

"She'll get over it, you know," he offered.

"I doubt that."

"I don't."

"I know Bex, Zach. She doesn't forgive easily."

"She loves you, Cam. She won't forget, but she will forgive you. Right now she's feeling left out and betrayed. But she's smart enough that she'll eventually see that this was the best option. She'll get over it."

"I hope you're right," I answered. "She was there for me after…my father disappeared. The three of us were suite mates, and Liz was great and all, but Bex was the one who really understood. She told me she knew what it was like to have your parents leave without telling you where they were going or what they were going to do. She told me she knew what it was like to not know if they would come home."

Zach's stride faltered, and he reached one hand in my direction. I pretended not to see it. I guess I wasn't really mad at him, I was mad at the situation he had gotten us into. Bex thought I'd betrayed her, that I'd chosen Zach over her, but she was wrong. I hadn't consciously made a choice, I'd just done it. Zach had appeared and we'd sort of ended up traveling together. Two operatives on two separate missions that just happened to be very similar.

"Cam." He stopped short, and I stopped next to him. "I'm sorry, Cam," he whispered, the back of his hand brushing my cheek gently.

"For what?" I asked, completely confused. Although, I'll admit that my confusion may very well have stemmed from the way his eyes were gazing intently into mine.

"For making you run all over the country with me, for hurting your relationship with Bex, for putting you in more danger than you were before, for telling you that my mother murdered your father…Take your pick, I'm sure I could think of more."

"It's what spies do," I shrugged, keenly aware of how close his face was to mine."We chose this life, remember?"

"I'm not sure I want to remember any more," he breathed. And then his lips were moving fiercely with mine, his hand catching in my hair and pulling me closer. "You see," he said, when he pulled away. "We shouldn't be doing this. Spies don't fall in love. It's too dangerous."

"Love is just another form of manipulation," I responded, willing myself to take a step back. Yelling at myself to take a step back. Damn it, Cammie, _take a step back._ But I couldn't. I couldn't move away from him, from one of the few people who had ever really understood me. Granted, he understood me so well he could play with my emotions until he drove me insane, but deep down I didn't mind.

I didn't mind the way he smirked at me, the way he condescendingly called me "Gallagher Girl," the way he was always keeping something from me. And I knew then, that if I had to break the rules with someone, it was going to have to be him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Sorry everyone, hit a bit of a writer's block and a lot of homework. But you get two chapters again. Enjoy!**

We ran all night. As the first fingers of light spread over the horizon we found ourselves at another bus stop. I glanced at Zach, and realized he must have a road map of every state in his head. We always seemed to be wandering aimlessly, and yet, we always ended up at a specific location.

"Where are we going this time?" I asked him, flipping my hair into my face and bending my head in case there were security cameras (after a few seconds I decided there weren't).

"Reno."

"So we're following their trail after all."

He nodded, then looked at me for the first time in many miles. "Unless you have a better plan, Gallagher Girl."

"I don't," I admitted. "But don't you think we should discuss things before we do them? You aren't the only person on this mission, Zach."

"Hesitation gets you killed, Gallagher Girl. And I'd prefer that didn't happen." His voice was business-like, had been since our exchange on the road hours before. He'd run silently beside me all night, never glancing in my direction.

He was right, deep down I knew that. Friendships and Love are dangerous in our world. Anything that involves emotion is dangerous. Spies follow orders, and the more powerful your emotions get, the harder that is to do. But if Zach hadn't grown a conscience and hadn't run away from the Circle, I would probably be dead. He'd already decide to break the rules, so why bother changing his mind now?

I shook my head in irritation and felt Liz's communication device vibrate in my pocket. I waited until we were safely on a bus, then I slipped it out and read her message.

_Nothing on Goode past L4. No missions. Like someone cleaned everything up. Your dad same. Solomon same._

"Shit," I muttered. Zach's eyes landed on my clenched hand and his fingers gently pried it open so that he could read the message too. And then his lips were on my ear.

"Makes perfect sense," he whispered. "Works with your theory about your father knowing something, too. If he'd found something, it might have ended up in a mission report. And if you didn't know what it was or where to find it, you'd scrub everything just in case."

"That doesn't help us, though," I answered, trying not to think about how close he was.

"No. It forces us to play their game. To get only the pieces of misinformation they feel like giving us."

"While voluntarily bringing ourselves closer and closer to them."

"Yeah."

I sighed, slipped Liz's gadget back into my pocket, and stared out the window.

"What are you thinking, Gallagher Girl?" he asked, wrapping an arm around my shoulder.

"Knowing that I have to hand myself over to them eventually makes me even more relieved that no one else I care about is in on this."

"Yeah," he muttered, extricating his arm.

"Zach that's not what I meant," I started, but he didn't let me finish.

"It doesn't matter, Gallagher Girl. We're spies. The only thing that matters is the mission."

"You are just as important to me as they are, but I have more confidence in your ability to not get hurt. You made this choice, and I respect your decision. You would have gone after them even if you hadn't come with me, wouldn't you?" He nodded, and I leaned against him.

"Get some sleep, Gallagher Girl," he whispered. "We're running toward a fire."


	13. Chapter 13

**Special thanks to Soleil Avant la Pluie on this chapter :) And thanks to everyone else who reviews as well.**

When I woke up, Zach's arm was around me again and his head was resting on mine. I didn't move, afraid to wake him. He needed the sleep at least as much as I did. I glanced out the window, calculating how fast the bus was going and how long I'd been asleep. The way I figured, we had less than an hour to go.

I watched the stripes on the highway pass next to the wheels of the bus, thinking about how all the little dashes made a continuous line when they were passed at speed. Sort of the way each day blends together to form a lifetime.

I felt his breathing change as he woke, felt as he stretched his muscles and lifted his head to stare out the window, making the same calculations I had.

"Twenty minutes?" he asked, wanting my opinion.

"I'd say more like seventeen," I answered. He didn't laugh, just nodded, but I couldn't help but notice that he left his arm around my shoulders, holding me closer to him.

"Seventeen thirty," he said, glancing at his watch as we pulled into the Reno bus stop. "Not bad, Gallagher Girl."

I shrugged. "I had a good teacher."

His muscles tensed and I instantly regretted my words when I saw him swallow hard. "I know," he answered. "That's why we have to do this."

And I realized that Zach's desire to get answers from the Circle didn't have anything to do with his father. Alex Goode was long dead in his mind, nothing would change that. But Joe Solomon wasn't. Joe Solomon had taken the place of a father, had turned Zach into who he was today. He'd trained us both and almost died for us. And Zach was willing to return the favor. He would do anything to find the answers, the reason the Circle was so desperate to have the journals.

"Cam?" he asked, his fingers brushing my cheek, the first time he'd used my name since our conversation so long ago.

"Let's go."

We were outside the house in less than an hour, disabling security systems that were far too advanced for the average suburban house. And then we were inside, searching for whatever the Circle had left for us to find.

"Cam, look," Zach whispered, indicating a row of coffee mugs. "Isn't that the same one from before?"

And there it was ,the same mug from San Diego with the same kind of button that opened the same kind of compartment that held the same kind of file folder. It was too similar not to be a trap.

And then they were on top of us. I'll admit, that's a little exaggerated. It was actually one man, one I recognized from that horrible night in the Blackthorne tunnels. But he came in the instant I grabbed the files. Waltzed up through the cellar door and stared straight at me down the barrel of his handgun.

"Hello, Cameron." He walked slowly forward, until he was less than two feet away from me and out of Zach's striking range. "Hello, Zachary."

I snuck a glance at Zach, whose every muscle was tense, and prayed he wouldn't do something stupid that would get us both killed, or worse, captured. And then I turned back to the man before me, calling up every bit of training I'd ever had.

"Really, Zach?" he sneered. "You made the worst spy mistake of all. I expected better from you."

I forced myself not to look at him, afraid of what I might see. _Please be calm, _I willed him, _please think this through._

"How stupid of you to choose Cameron to accompany you on your vendetta when she was far too obvious a choice. I'd have thought that after all those years…"

As soon as he looked at Zach for more than five straight seconds, I made my move. I knocked the gun from his hand, sending it flying across the room. His fist knocked into my face, and I tasted blood, but I managed to defect his next blow, countering it with one of my own. He was knocked a half step backward and was about to come at me again, when he froze.

I didn't hear the gunshot until he crumpled over, until he fell toward me and landed face down on the floor. And I didn't really register what had happened until a moment later, when I turned and saw Zach, still pointing the gun in our direction, with a cold and satisfied expression on his face.


	14. Chapter 14

**Thanks to everyone who's been reading and making suggestions. You guys are the best!**

It was a perfect shot. The logical portion of my brain admired his marksmanship. The emotional portion of my brain shut down, unable to merge the Zach before me, the Zach who'd just killed someone, with the Zach who'd held me on the bus, the Zach who'd kissed me last night.

My eyes jumped from him to the body and back, unable to process what I was seeing. But he didn't hesitate, not for an instant. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the gun, then tossed it back on the floor, completely calm. Then he moved quickly around the room, wiping the prints from everything we'd touched. When his fingers closed around my arm, I jerked away.

"We have to get out of here. They'll be here any minute."

"You just…killed someone," I said, as though I couldn't quite believe it, and I guess I really couldn't.

"We need to get out here, Cam." His fingers wrapped around my upper arm, but this time he didn't let me pull away.

And then I heard the sirens. Zach cursed under his breath and hauled me to the back door, kicked it open and pulled me down the alley.

"Run," he ordered. And I didn't know what else to do, so I listened. We ran for less than ten minutes, then found a main street and slipped into the crowd. Because all spies know that the most obvious criminal is the person fleeing the crime scene. We walked quickly, purposefully, down the streets, until we found ourselves in front of a public transit parking lot.

"Get in," Zach said, his voice commanding. His expression was so terrifying, so completely emotionless, that I listened. I climbed into the dark blue Toyota Camry without a second thought.

I saw his hands move under the dashboard, felt the car sputter to life, and watched as he calmly shifted it into gear and headed for the highway.

"You…killed…him," I stammered, when we were safely on the highway.

"I had to Cam," he said quietly, turning to meet my eyes. "He'd have turned us in. We're spies, that's what we do."

"But we're going to have to hand ourselves in eventually. You know we'll have to get caught to find what we're looking for…"

"On _our_ terms, Cam," he said, turning his eyes back to the road. "It's like a giant game of hide and seek. We can't let them find us until we're ready to be found. That makes all the difference. If we're ready…we just might make it out alive."

He drove in silence for a while, fifty two miles, to be exact, and I replayed the image over and over in my head. It was his face-completely relaxed-and his efficient business-like attitude immediately after. And then I knew.

"That wasn't your first time, was it." I phrased it as a question, but it certainly didn't come out as one. And it didn't really need an answer, because deep down, I already knew. And really it made perfect sense. Zach had worked with Mr. Solomon in the field for almost a year, had been a member of the Circle for longer than that. If I'd been using my head, if I hadn't fallen prey to my emotions, it wouldn't have made me think twice. But it did. I was so naïve.

"It gets easier," he whispered, reaching over and resting his hand on my knee. "It was hard for me too, the first time. But it's easier when you've seen firsthand the damage they've done, when you know what they're likely to do in the future. And it's easier when they're threatening someone you care about."

"And the cops?"

"They won't find us," he assured. "We didn't leave any prints, and even if we had, we don't exist, Cam. Remember? Even if they somehow manage to find DNA or fingerprints, the only people who'd be able to match evidence to us work for the agency. That puts anyone who's searching for us closer to our trail."

"But the Circle will know."

"Yeah," he agreed. "They'll know I killed one of their operatives, one of my mother's most loyal goons. But if we did a good job cleaning up after ourselves they'll still think I'm on my own."

"And the car?"

"By the time those people come home and report it missing, we'll have left it somewhere for the authorities to find. Those are people who take buses from the outlying suburbs to the places where all the jobs are. They won't be back until late tonight."

"You've done this before too."

"If by 'this' you mean running away from a bad situation, then yes, of course. I've done it loads of times."

We rode in silence for another twenty-eight minutes, until he looked at me and spoke.

"What's in the folder, Cam?" I didn't know, and I wasn't entirely sure I really wanted to find out. But I pulled out the folder and opened it anyway. Because if I wanted this to be over, I didn't have much choice.

They were surveillance photos again, large glossy prints, and there were three of them. The first was anticlimactic, a simple photo of Zach's mother and Mr. Solomon talking on a bridge somewhere. I held it up for him to see, and he glanced over and nodded.

The second was just as unhelpful, an image of Mr. Solomon standing near some sort of computer consol. Again, I held it up for Zach to see and he glanced at me and nodded. The third photo was blurrier, as though it had been taken in a very dim light, and the only thing that popped out at me at first was the date printed in the corner: 6/23/2007. In fact the photo was so blurry that it took me a moment to even find the subject.

But when I looked closer I saw it. It was a man sitting cross-legged on a stone floor, his eyes closed, his head on his hands, and his spine curled almost as though he were trying to protect himself. And then I looked at the face and dropped the photo.

"Cam?" Zach asked, alarmed. "What's wrong? Who's in the third picture?"

I took a deep breath, attempting to make my head stop spinning. Then I picked up the photo, weighing it between my fingers, trying to absorb what I was seeing.

"Zach," I breathed, when I was finally able to find my voice. "It's my dad."


	15. Chapter 15

_Hi everyone! Sorry I've been away for so long, I've been so busy with college. I'll try not to take two month hiatuses again. Hope you like the new chapters! Read and review, please!_

I put my head between my knees and tried to breath. Yes, I'd seen pictures of my father before. This one was no different. It was no more significant than any other image I'd seen. But the problem with lying to people all the time is that it gets harder and harder to lie to yourself. And I couldn't do it.

It wasn't the picture so much, though the expression of complete surrender on my father's face was physically painful. It was the date, more than a year after my father disappeared.

"Cam," he said, not even looking at me. "Wipe down the car as best you can. We're almost there." Was he joking? After what I'd just seen, did he really expect me to be okay enough to do anything?

He pushed a cloth into my face, and I knew he was serious. I snatched it out of his hand and stuffed the prints back in the folder, furious. But I did my best to push it aside, trying to remind myself that real spies don't get upset. Real spies are like Zach. Because every spy knows that emotions are your enemies. Emotions get you killed.

He pulled over on the side of the highway, and we gave the car one last wipe before marching down the ramp and into yet another bus station.

We didn't speak at all on the three hour ride, we didn't speak at all when we got off the bus, and we didn't speak at all as we checked in to another disease-infested hovel. I was so exhausted that I immediately collapsed on the terrifying bed, not even thinking about the germs I knew it harbored.

I don't think I realized I was holding the folder until Zach's fingers gently pried mine open and confiscated it, leaving one arm resting lightly on my waist. I heard the shuffle of paper and his sharp intake of breath, but the noises were far away, as though coming through a long tunnel. I tried to focus, tried to analyze Zach's reaction, but the dark was closing in, coming too fast, and I couldn't.


	16. Chapter 16

His arm was still around me when I woke up, and daylight was streaming through the thin motel room curtains. I was still for a few moments, keeping my eyes closed and letting my mind wander, trying to pretend we were normal people waking up together. But not facing the truth doesn't make it any easier. I learned that a long time ago.

So I opened my eyes and let them move around the room without moving my body. Nothing was out of place except the folder, which was now sitting across the room staring at me. And reminding me I had a job to do.

I shrugged out of Zach's arm and sat up, moving across the bed and grabbing the folder. He was propped on his elbow when I sat back down, his increasingly shaggy hair falling in his gorgeous eyes. I tried not to notice.

I took the photos out again, shuffling through them and searching for something I hadn't noticed before. I'd flipped through the stack about ten times before I saw it. It was the date, 6/23/2007, stamped lightly into the corner. On all three photos.

"The date," I muttered, glancing at Zach, who hadn't taken his eyes off me since I sat down.

"It's the same on all three photos," he nodded. "I know."

Of course he'd already noticed. But it's always easier to look at evidence objectively when you're not emotionally invested, and who knew how long he'd stared at them after I'd fallen asleep last night, so I cut myself some slack.

But there was something about the second two photos that was similar. If I looked really closely, pressed my nose against the paper and squinted at the details, it was there. Something in the background on the photo of Mr. Solomon looked a lot like the metal pipe on my father's cell from the third picture.

"Zach," I said, narrowing my eyes at him and taking in his nonchalant expression. "Tell me where these are."

"The second two are at Blackthorne, in the base there. And the bridge is in the closest city to the school." He's silent for a moment, letting me absorb this. "They're trying to convince us that Joe knew where they were holding your father, and didn't tell anyone. That maybe he even helped with the torture himself."

"No," I whispered. "He trusted him, I trusted him…He couldn't…"

"Cam," he said, his lips on my ear, silencing me. "I don't think he could have either. But your father was adamant about bringing down the circle, and he would have told Joe to maintain his cover at all costs. And if Joe would have listened to anyone…"

He broke off when his eyes were inches from mine, his fingers sliding through my hair. But I pulled away. We had a job to do.

"What's he doing on that computer?" I asked, picking up the photo again.

"I'd say from the screen that that's the CIA database," Zach answered without missing a beat, as though he hadn't been seconds away from kissing me. "And based on what your little friend told us this morning, I'd guess he's scrubbing files."

"So they'd finally figured out what my father knew, they just didn't know who he'd told?"

"I don't know, Cam," he shook his head. "A year is a long time to hold someone for information. And only get part of it?"

"But if he'd told them everything, they wouldn't still be looking for me. They want something from me, Zach. Otherwise I'd have been dead long ago."

His muscles tense for an instant at my words before he nods. "They're planning to use me to get to you, we know that. We just don't know why they want you. And why they want you alive." He thumps his fist against the bed in irritation. "God, I wish I knew that."

"Does Mr. Solomon know?"

"Could he have known and not told any of us?"

"You know him best," I offered.

"No one really knew Joe," he shook his head. "I keep feeling like he could have given us answers. All the time we were together, I knew there were things he wasn't telling me, and I was okay with that. He never trusted me completely, was afraid that maybe I'd go back to them. But he would have told you. Sending you to find the journal was the beginning of him telling you everything."

I had to look away, because the pain in his eyes almost ripped me in pieces. His expression was far too close to the one I wore six years ago. I wished I could stop this, wished I could make everything okay. But I've been trained to be a realist all my life, and so I knew. Nothing is ever okay, in the end. It's never over. Not the job, not the danger, not the pain. So I did the only thing I could.

I slid my arms around him and rested my head on his shoulder, taking in his scent, focusing on the feel of his muscles against my skin. His arms gathered me close, until we were practically one person.

"Zach," I whispered, searching for his eyes, pulling his face down so it was closer to mine. "I think I love you."

His fingers threaded through my hair, his lips moved with mine, fusing us together. It took us a while to run out of breath, but when he pulled away, he didn't go far.

"Cammie," he whispered, his eyes locked on mine. "My Gallagher Girl. Cammie, I know…"

And then we both jumped, as our pagers from Liz vibrated simultaneously. His hands were freer than mine, and he reached his first. I think that deep down I knew the moment I felt the gadget whir in my pocket, but it didn't really sink in until I saw the look on Zach's face, a mix of emotions I can't describe.

"Cam," he whispered, squeezing my hands and meeting my eyes. "He's awake."


	17. Chapter 17

_Yes, they are both short, but that's why there are two of them. Hope you guys enjoy. Read and Review please!_

"So what do we do now?"

"Plan to break into your school?"

"Not possible," I told him. "With me gone, security will be higher than ever, because my mother would be afraid of anyone else following. It's summer now, but who knows what sort of improvements they're making as we speak? We need more information before we can plan an infiltration."

"Isn't that where your friends can help us?"

And that was the point where my brain started to fold in on itself. It was just too much, too fast, and I couldn't process it all. And I know that sounds ridiculous coming from a spy, but even we have our weaknesses. And mine were my friends. And my family.

There were too many conflicting theories and too much new information bouncing around. So instead of answering Zach's question, I flipped over the folder and stole the gross and barely functioning pen out of the drawer with the stolen bibles.

_Possible Theories of why the Circle wants Cameron Morgan and Zachary Goode (hereafter referred to as the operatives)_

_The operatives received crucial information regarding the Circle without knowing it.  
Supporting evidence: The Circle seems to want the operatives alive. The Circle has been trying to capture Operative Morgan for a year. The operatives have the journals of Joe Solomon and Matthew Morgan. The Circle tortured Joe Solomon while trying to find those journals._

_The Circle believes that the operatives received crucial information regarding the Circle when in fact neither of the journals contained hard information because neither of the journal writers would be dumb enough to write such information down.  
Supporting evidence: The operatives have gleaned no hard information from the journals._

_The Circle believes that Operative Morgan could be used to extract information from Matthew Morgan, who the Circle has been holding for almost six years.  
Supporting evidence: None of the other theories seem accurate. And the operatives can find no definitive proof that Matthew Morgan is dead._

_Hard Facts That the Operatives have encountered so far._

_Seven surveillance photographs as follows:_

_Matthew Morgan shaking hands with Joe Solomon._

_Matthew Morgan sitting on a bench._

_Joe Solomon sitting on the same bench._

_Alexander Goode and Matthew Morgan._

_Joe Solomon and Caroline Goode on a bridge near Blackthorne._

_Joe Solomon at Blackthorne, possibly scrubbing CIA files._

_Matthew Morgan in a holding cell at Blackthorne._

"Are you finished?" Zach asked, when I finally lifted my pen from the file folder.

"Yeah," I answered, completely serious. "For now." He slipped the folder from between my fingers and glanced at it.

"A list Gallagher Girl?" he teased. "This is the best they teach you at that fancy school of yours?"

"It helps me analyze," I roll my eyes. "Deal with it. The problem with our mission is that we have too many theories and basically no hard facts. But I think you're right," I answered, meeting his gaze. "We need to see Joe."

Zach nodded, but I could see the uncertainty behind his eyes. The silenced voice saying, _I'm not sure I can do this. _Words he didn't dare say aloud, because we're spies, and not doing something because we're afraid of it is never and option. But I knew. I knew because I felt exactly the same way.

There's something about digging up your past that's equal parts fear and excitement. One half of your brain thirsting for closure, searching for it, crying out for answers, and the other part cowering in a corner, trying to stay out of sight of the skeletons that have begun to form a cluster in front of the closet across the room. I knew how Zach was feeling, because I wasn't sure I could do that either.

"Then we need Bex. She's our best shot at a comprehensive field evaluation."

Something twisted inside of me, and I grimaced as I saw Bex's face in my head. I knew I had to fix what I'd broken, had to make things right with us. And I knew I had to do that in person. So I slipped Liz's gadget from my pocket and sent Bex a short but pointed message.

_We need to meet. Just the two of us._

Her answer was almost simultaneous, as though she never let her phone out of her sight.

_Where?_

_Whatever works for you. I can be anywhere._

_University of the Pacific in front of the main gymnasium at 5._

"Cam," he asked, looking over my shoulder. "Why is she that close?"

I shook my head, worried. Then I turned to look at him and answered.

"There's only one way to find out."


	18. Chapter 18

"Suspicious person, five o'clock."

I glanced at the nearest reflective surface and saw the boy who was staring at me as I walked across the campus in my latest thrift store outfit.

"Do you know him?" I asked, waiting for Zach to identify my tail.

"No, but…"

"Then chill," I ordered. "He's probably staring because I don't look like I belong here."

"No, Gallagher Girl, you definitely look like you belong. But he might be staring because you look hot."

"Focus, Zach," I ordered through my comms unit. "I'm trusting you to keep Bex safe."

He fell silent, realizing the magnitude of his responsibility, and I continued to walk purposefully across the campus, blending into the scene of summer students. I reached the meet with a minute to spare, glanced around for Bex, and couldn't find her. So I sat down on a bench, took out a burner cell phone, and pretended to text.

"You're 49 seconds early," she commented, as she suddenly appeared and sat down next to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Zach's tail head into the main gym, and sighed in relief.

"Why were you so close?" I asked, not about to waste any time.

"Do you want the real reason, or my excuse?" She asked, and I heard a bit of the old Bex in her voice that made me smile.

"Both."

"Solomon's awake. I knew you'd need to see him and that you'd need someone to help you get in. Zach may be an expert on the Circle, but he's clueless when it comes to the mansion." I tried to ignore her bitter tone and kept listening. "Where is he, by the way?"

"Watching us from a distance."

She nodded. "I didn't really think he'd let you come alone. Your comms unit?"

"Closed," I answered. "He trusts you." She nodded, but I could see that she was pleased that we weren't being eavesdropped on. "And you didn't answer both questions."

"I was actually visiting an uncle in Sacramento. I drove down here this morning for an adventure," she said. "The tracking device in Liz's phone works really well."

"How long have you been in Sacremento?"

"A week. But I've been around the mansion most of the summer, and I've been receiving updates since then. Your biggest problem is going to be your mom."

I swallowed hard, not ready to face this. "Tell me," I ordered.

"Cam, she's not been taking this well. When she couldn't find you that first day, she came to us, and we searched frantically until we found your mission report on the sword case. And then she cried. Cam, I've never seen your mom cry before. I didn't know she could."

I force back my own tears, because I remember clearly the last time my mother cried. It was six years ago.

"She's scared, Cam. I think we all are. So we've been spending a lot of time at the mansion this summer. Liz has been doing some government work, and Macey and I had to be ready to fly with her at a moment's notice.

"She doesn't know where you are, but she does know that you're in contact with us. We had to tell her that you were okay after we found you. If you'd been watching her all summer, you would have too. But she told us not to tell her anything else. That if you'd wanted the information to reach her, you would have arranged for that to happen. I think she understands, Cam, somewhere deep down."

"So what about security?" I asked, because I knew that if I said anything about my mother I'd start to cry.

"See, that's the thing," Bex answered, puzzled. "There haven't been any additions. I think your mom wanted to leave a way for you to come back if you needed too. But she knew that we'd tell you about Solomon. And she knows that you'll need to see him. Liz says she hasn't left the room since he woke up. He fades in and out, sometimes he's there, sometimes he's not. But when he's there, he's himself. At least that's what Liz told me. And that he asked Macey to bring you to him."

I closed my eyes for half a second to compose myself. Then I pressed the button on my watch.

"Zach," I muttered. "We're taking a road trip."

"Cammie," he answered. "We're extending out perpetual road trip."

I turned to hug Bex goodbye, to thank her for coming, for helping us. But she was already gone.


	19. Chapter 19

_These one's are a little longer, guys. Sorry, not much Zammie, but I promise the forthcoming chapters will be better. Read and Review as always! Enjoy._

It was almost as wet that day as on the day I left, one of those freak rainstorms that happen in the summer months in Virginia. We'd transferred buses every few hours, zigzagging across the country in our ever-changing thrift store disguises. As we got on our final bus, my hair was blond and I was a student from University of Miami who was on vacation with my boyfriend, a brown-haired blue-eyed guy with a five o'clock shadow that was completely real (and kind of hot). Tiffany James and Calvin Smith.

It felt like coming home, but at the same time it felt like walking into a prison. Walking into a trap. And that's a hard thing for a spy to do.

"It feels wrong," I muttered under my breath.

"I know," Zach muttered, his arm around my shoulders. "But we don't have anyone following us, I'm pretty sure. There's no logical reason for this…"

I shot him a look, and he broke off because we both knew the truth. Nothing in this world is about logic. It's about instincts and feelings. And when something feels wrong, it usually is. In a world of life and death, that's important.

"Cam, we don't have to do this," he whispered, his lips on my ear so only I could hear him. "Your safety is my priority. We can find another way to talk to Joe."

"We do have to do this," I said, softly. "You'd go anyway, even without me. And then how would you deal with my mother?"

"Does she know we're together?"

"They haven't told her," I answered. "But I'm sure she's figured it out. She is a spy, after all."

"That's what you're mostly afraid of, isn't it?" I didn't answer, but he'd known how to read my silences for a long time. "She loves you, Cam. And she's a spy. Deep down, below the part of her that wants desperately to keep you safe, she knows that you needed to do this. She understands, Cam. She's terrified for you, but she understands."

"What makes you think that?"

"The only people who've been looking for us are with the Circle."

He was right, and while I'm sure the thought had fleetingly crossed my mind before, it wasn't until that point that it really took hold. My mother had a large and experienced team of people at her disposal, and the two of us were novices, pulling from a meager six years with very minimal field experience and few resources. If she'd wanted badly enough to find us, she probably could have. After all, Liz and Bex and Macey had managed it.

All too soon, I felt the bus beginning to slow, and as it pulled into the Roseville station, everything inside me began to clench. Missions don't usually make me nervous, and while I hadn't been on very many, I'd never had that feeling before. Not when I sneaking out to meet Josh, not when I was chasing a stolen disk of Gallagher alumni, not when I was infiltrating campaign fundraisers. Not even when I was on my way to Blackthorne just a few months ago.

It felt so wrong. But in a strange way, it seemed right that the hardest mission for a spy would be going home.

Zach took my hand in his as we meandered down the road, getting soaked to the skin and maintaining our cover as a pair of lovestruck tourists. His fingers gripped mine in a way that was both extremely protective and comforting at the same time, and his touch made me think back, made me wonder about that unfinished sentence. I'd known Zachary Goode for almost two years then, but deep down I knew that I'll never really _know _Zachary Goode. And yet, a small, irrational voice in the back of my head kept asking questions. Kept wondering if the Zach I'd almost seen that night was the real thing. If, to use the clichéd phrase, maybe I'd finally peeled away another layer of the onion.

It was still there, just like I'd known it would be, and as we made our way through the one remaining passage into the Gallagher academy, the more it felt like a trap. And the less that bothered me.

The longer we walked, hand in hand and shivering in our soaked clothing, through the tunnel, the more I wanted to reach the end, no matter what else was there. The more I wanted to put my feet inside the school that had been my home for four years. The more I needed it.

No one was there. That was the first surprise. In fact, we'd almost made it all the way down to the Mr. Solomon's room before we found her. Although I suppose you could say that she found us.

She was leaning against a wall, her eyes closed and body relaxed, and she identified us without even looking, although she would have seen through our weak disguises in an instant. But her voice was cool, the spy and not the mother, and I wondered for an instant what it was I'd wanted.

I'd been afraid of a reaction. I'd been afraid that seeing what I'd done to her would make it impossible to leave. I'd been afraid that she would try to stop us, try to keep us from doing what we so desperately needed to do. But as much as I had wanted this, I hadn't really thought it through. And her cold, emotionless tone cut far deeper than I had anticipated.

"Cameron," she said quietly, without moving. "And Zachary."

She opened her eyes for a moment, running them over us. Then she turned and walked through a door, expecting us to follow. And she didn't glance back once.


	20. Chapter 20

I thought I was prepared. Everything in the room was exactly as it had been the last time I'd been there, right down to the pale teacher on a hospital cot in the center of it. But I wasn't. The month we'd been running had only made it harder. I glanced at Zach, whose eyes told me everything. If I thought it hurt me to see the once great Joe Solomon reduced to this, it was a lot worse for him.

He didn't move, and for a moment, neither did I. By the time I was able to pull my eyes away from the sleeping figure in the center of the room, my mother was gone. So I did the only thing I could do. I walked over to Mr. Solomon and sat down in the chair next to him.

Zach moved slowly closer, finally settling into the seat beside mine. He didn't speak for a long time, just stared that the shadow of the great man we had both known. In fact, I was the one who finally broke the silence.

"Zach," I whispered, but I didn't have to say anything else, which was good, because my voice was dangerously close to cracking. He looked at me and knew in an instant what I needed.

"Go find your mom, Cam. I'll be fine."

So I did, even though I knew he wasn't telling the truth. My feet moved on their own, following a path they'd walked so many Sunday afternoons it was impossible to count them (okay, I could have, if I'd really wanted to). I didn't knock on the door the way I usually did. Instead, I took things into my own hands and walked in. She didn't look up when I entered, so I did what I'd wanted to do for over a month. I walked over, sat down on the couch, and wrapped my arms around her. And it took a few minutes, but eventually she relaxed and hugged me back.

I felt something wet on the top of my head, and then I realized. It wasn't that she was angry at me, it wasn't that she hadn't been happy to see me. It was the exact opposite. The only way she could keep from losing all semblance of composure was to become the spy she'd been trained to be.

"I'm so sorry, Mom," I whispered, trying to fight back my own tears. "But I had to do this. I couldn't sit here protected for another summer and watch everyone else get hurt looking for my answers. First Aunt Abby, then Mr. Solomon. I couldn't watch and see who would be next…"

"I know," she said, squeezing me tighter. "I know."

"I wanted to say goodbye to you, really I did, but I was afraid that if I told you…"

"I wouldn't let you leave. Oh, Cam, do you have any idea how much I love you?"

I was fairly sure that was a rhetorical question.

"I'm just so glad you're okay. I've never appreciated Liz's genius more." She was still holding me tightly, and it was getting kind of hard to breathe. Thank goodness I'd been trained in holding my breath several years ago. "And I know. If I hadn't had you, I'd have been out there searching long ago. That's why I worried so much about you leaving the mansion. I was afraid that one day you'd get it into your head to do this. Before you were ready."

"Do you think I'm ready now?"

"Yes, Cam," she nodded. "I know you are."

"I love you, Mom," I whispered. "I wasn't trying to scare you. That's why I left the report for you to find."

"I know. And I love you too, Cam. More than you are capable of ever understanding. But you should probably get back to Zach. Joe's asleep now, but he usually fades back in around this time. And if I recall correctly, the two of you are on a mission."

"You're right. But I may need to ask you some things later."

"I'm always here Cammie. You know that."

And I did. So I pulled myself away from her and headed back to Mr. Solomon and Zach. And halfway down the hallway I stopped. Because I could hear muffled voices coming through the wall. Or rather a muffled voice.

I am a spy, so of course I sneaked closer as quietly as I could, assembling the most effective strategy and defense moves in my head. But the closer I got, the clearer the voice got. And then I realized that it was Zach.

"I kept my promise, you know," he muttered. "I've done my best to keep her safe. But it's not enough. We can't do this without you. Neither of us knows what to make of their evidence. They keep leaving us these surveillance photos, planting them in all the places I would think to look for information about my family. Like they figure with you…dead…I'll start poking around in all the things you kept me out of before.

"You knew, didn't you? That she killed my dad and Matt. That's why you kept me from looking too deeply into my dad's disappearance. If Matt's really dead, that is. Some of what Cammie says makes sense. Do they still have him somewhere? Are they still looking for information? What is so important that it's worth waiting six years for? God, Joe, what was so important about the journals? What was it that made them worth dying for?

"We can't find it, you know. We've read them over and over again, and whatever's there, we don't get it. I mean, they already got Matt, and they knew you'd been turned the minute you started working at Gallagher. They did give me orders to kill you, after all, when they couldn't find a way to use you to get to Cammie. Thank God they didn't realize the real way to get to her was through me, at least not until you'd gotten to me first.

"I'm haunted by that, by what might have happened if you hadn't convinced me. I mean, what if I hadn't fallen in love with her? What if you hadn't turned me? Would I have been the one who did this to you?"

We answered at the same time, my strong voice and his weak, hoarse one piercing the air in unison, with the same answer.

"No."


	21. Chapter 21

_Short and no Zammie, but I think the amount of information makes up for that. If something doesn't fit with the books, please tell. Sadly I am writing this without the benefit of having them in front of me for reference. Hope you like this one as much as I do. Enjoy!_

Zach jumped at our word, his eyes moving frantically between our faces, searching for an explanation.

"Bad reaction," Mr. Solomon whispered. "You could blow a cover like that, Goode."

If I hadn't been so relieved to see him alive and conscious, I would have laughed.

"Joe." His voice was almost as soft, as though he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, as though he was talking to a ghost. Which I guess, in a way, he was.

"I suppose I owe you a thank you for saving my life," Mr. Solomon whispered, as Zach crouched down closer to the cot.

"How much do you remember?"

"Enough," he answered, forcing back what appeared to be a grimace. I got the impression he was still in a lot of pain. "Is she here?"

"Yes," I muttered, coming to kneel on his other side. "I'm here, Mr. Solomon."

He attempted what was supposed to be a curt shake of his head, but didn't actually look like one. "Joe Solomon is dead," he reminded. "Live the cover at all times."

Only my former coveops teacher would attempt to give me instructions when he'd just begun to recover from a near-death experience.

"We need answers," Zach said softly, calling Mr. Solomon's attention back to our purpose.

"Ask. I'll try."

"Is Matthew Morgan dead?"

"I don't know."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"June 23rd, 2007." The date on the photos.

"More than a year after he disappeared."

"Yes." His voice was sad, as though he knew exactly what this meant to us, as if he could see the conclusions we were drawing from this tiny piece of information.

"Did you tell anyone what you knew?"

"No. I didn't know anything for the first year. But the last thing he told me was to keep my cover no matter what. So when they called on me to scrub some files from the database, I played along. They had him in a holding cell right next to where they took me. It was a test, he knew that too, even with whatever they'd done to him. A year is a long time to hold someone for interrogation. But they'd have killed him before he'd have told them anything. Nothing could make Matt talk if he didn't want to."

Except maybe me.

"He begged me to protect him, but I could tell from his eyes that he was really asking me to protect you, you and Rachel. He knew that if I told her, she'd come after him, that would only get everyone involved killed. And I don't think he wanted her to know what he'd been through. So I turned away from him. I kept my cover and scrubbed the files, and then I went back to the agency and kept my mouth shut. It was the only way."

"The summer he disappeared, I heard my mother tell someone that she'd killed him. Why would she have said that if she was actually holding him for information?"

"Did you hear a name?"

"No. But the timeframe is exact. And I couldn't find any other operatives who disappeared that week."

"Your mother killed a lot of people."

"I know," he answered quietly. "Was my father one of them?"

Mr. Solomon attempted a nod. "I didn't want you to know that. Alex was with us at the very beginning. He was the first one she caught."

Zach nodded silently, his face stoic, and I hurt for him. If didn't learn anything else that day, I learned that your body shifts into spy mode when it senses danger. Or pain.

"He started everything. He was a few years older than us, but he picked out Matt's talent and built him into an ally. Convinced him to join the Circle as a double agent. I joined too, blindly following the crowd. I had no idea that he wasn't really one of us. It wasn't until later, right before he started seeing your mom, that he turned me. I was assigned a target I couldn't take out, so I botched the mission. But they were going to send me after her again, and I was having nightmares about it. He was getting suspicious, poking around everywhere, and eventually I went to him for help."

"Who?"

"Abigail Cameron," he answered, and something clenched inside me as the image of my aunt bleeding in the road flashed before my eyes. "Matt told me his secret, and told me that if I really wanted out of the circle, he'd help me. Alex was killed a few years later. He'd gone to Greece to pursue an asset, and he didn't come back. They found the body a few weeks later. I guess before that we'd never really thought about failure, we were young and naïve and we must have thought we were invincible. So we started keeping the journal, just in case."

He was starting to fade, I could see it clearly, and one look at Zach told me that he saw it as well. We knew we didn't have much time. But Mr. Solomon must have known that too, because he didn't let Zach ask another question.

"There's a third journal. One where we wrote everything we knew."

"Where is it?"

He tried to shake his head again, and this attempt was even weaker than the previous one. "I don't know. Matt had it. He must have hidden it somewhere, or they would have gotten it when they captured him. But that's what they want, the third journal. All the secrets that could bring them down."

His eyes slipped closed, but he whispered one last instruction as they did so. "Be careful. Be very careful. I promised."

_Just a comment: In the back of my head, I have this conspiracy theory that Zach is really Solomon's son. No, I'm not going to throw that in here, and I don't think Ally Carter would either, but I'd love to see someone do something with it. I hereby yield my rights to the idea, just please message me if you use it, because I definitely want to read!_


	22. Chapter 22

_**The Zammie you've been waiting patiently for :) Enjoy! And Review please!**_

Zach stared at Joe Solomon for seventeen seconds. Then he got up and walked calmly out of the room. I wanted to follow him, but I forced myself not to. He'd just had a lot of his suspicions confirmed, and I knew he'd need some time to think about it. To come to terms with what he'd heard. I knew because I'd been there.

I gave him 52 minutes. Then I pulled myself away from my sleeping teacher and went after him. He was right where I'd expected him to be, in the tower where we'd last spoken at the end of the year.

I stayed quiet as I approached him, taking in the way he was perched on the stone window ledge, staring unseeingly out into the distance.

"Hey," I muttered, sitting down beside him. He didn't answer, didn't move. But he didn't send me away either, and I took that as a good sign. I waited another 37 minutes. Then I slowly placed my hand on top of his.

A tiny smile flashed across his face, and he glanced over at me.

"Thanks," he muttered, shaking his head.

"For what?"

"For not saying anything." His fingers squeezed mine, and he turned and smiled sadly at me. "It's weird, finally knowing the truth."

I didn't answer him, because I knew that as much as Zach pretended to be bulletproof, he wasn't. And right then he trusted me enough to let me see him lying on the ground bleeding. But he didn't need me to tell him that he would live. He didn't need me to pull him back up. He just needed me to listen.

His fingers played with mine as he spoke. "Someone knows," he shook his head, repeating the words he'd spoken to me years ago. "I almost wish now that I didn't. I was right, all along."

"How do you do that, Cam? How do you turn your entire life into a legend, to the point of creating another worthless life? To maintain your _cover_?"

"You're not," I answered, but he wouldn't look at me.

"Of course I am," he snapped back. "Just look at me. I nearly got Joe killed, and you. I can't even accomplish the one easy task I've been entrusted with. I can't even find the f-g journal."

"You knew."

He nodded slowly. "Joe told me, as the cave exploded. He said, 'at least they didn't get the third one.' I've been trying to find out how much the Circle knows, but I haven't gotten anywhere. I can't even do that. I'm worthless, Cam."

"Zach," I whispered, placing my other hand on his cheek and turning his head so I could look in his eyes. "You're not worthless to me."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, a string of unsaid words hanging in the air between us.

"You know," I said finally. "If finding the journal was easy, they wouldn't be looking for either of us. But we _will _find it, Zach. If _they_ already know that, why don't you?"

"Cam," he said quietly, his eyes boring into mine. "Are you sure you want to do this? We could disappear, the two of us. They'd never find us."

It was the same tone he'd used when he'd asked me to run away with him before. As though he already knew the answer.

"I have to do this." I told him. "I have to know."

He nodded. "The truth isn't always what you want to hear, Gallagher Girl," he pleaded. "I'd know."

"But it's better than spending the rest of your life hoping," I answered. "Or running."

"Hope is the most dangerous thing a spy can have," he smiled, lifting our intertwined hands to my face and inching closer. "It's a good thing you that have someone around to protect you."

"Yeah," I answered, smiling. "You know, I seem to be breaking a lot of rules lately. I think you're a bad influence."

"I know I'm a bad influence," he said, his other hand running through my hair. "But don't kid yourself, Gallagher Girl. You've always broken the rules." His lips touched mine for an instant, teasing me. "And I like it."

I pulled him closer and found his lips with mine, kissing him gently, cautiously. He sighed, sitting back and pulling me into his lap, anchoring me against his chest and wrapping his arms around me.

"Cammie," he whispered into my hair. "I love you."

And then I had to tell myself the truth. Despite all the spy rules that said this was wrong, that this was dangerous, I couldn't deny, that right at that moment, as much as I wanted to convince myself otherwise, I was happy.

Because being in Zach's arms made me feel something I hadn't felt since I'd been attacked on the roof, something I'd been searching for for over a year. Being with Zach made me feel safe.


	23. Chapter 23

**Long chapter for all of my amazing readers. You guys topped 100 reviews, and you have no idea how excited I am! The two paragraphs in italics are by ALLY CARTER and are borrowed directly from ONLY THE GOOD SPY YOUNG. I can take no credit for them whatsoever. Just a reminder that I do not own any of the characters either. Also, I did some fact checking with the book and have edited pieces of Chapter 21, so you may want to reread it, although nothing too important is different. Enjoy! And keep reviewing!**

We watched the sun go down in silence, and even once it was gone we didn't move. I tried to convince myself that we could stay like that forever. That there was no one chasing us, that there was nothing to look for. That it was just Zach and me, and the rest of the world was all a dream, conjured to entertain us as we stared out of our window.

But I'm a realist.

"What now?" I asked, finally, my head still pressed against his muscled chest.

"I don't know, Cam. He had to have left clues somewhere as to where he hid it. There had to have been a plan. It'd be stupid to keep a record of everything you knew if you weren't going to make sure it outlived you."

"My father's journal?"

"That's what I was thinking. And maybe what the Circle thought too, unless they were just blindly chasing it. Joe had it when he went missing, right?"

"Yeah," I said hesitantly. "But you said you'd tried and hadn't found anything."

"No," Zach said, quietly, annoyed with himself. "I've scoured the original at least 23 times now."

The idea hit us at exactly the same moment.

"Unless," I said, slowly, turning to face him. "It's a…"

"Code within a code," he finished. "Do you still have your translation?"

"You haven't memorized it after 23 readings?" I teased good-naturedly. "What kind of spy _are_ you?"

"You make lists," he teased, and for once his smirk made me happy. It meant he wasn't doing as badly as I'd feared. Or that he was really good at hiding it. "That's way worse. And of course I've memorized it. It's just easier to look for patterns when I have it in front of me."

"So write it out," I countered, smiling mischievously up at him.

"With what, blood?" he laughed. "I'd prefer to avoid that if I can, thanks. Being able to endure a great pain is does not make you a masochist."

"That sentence makes you an egotist, though," I smiled.

"You bet, Gallagher Girl," he smirked, letting his palm rest on my cheek. "But that's why you love me."

His words, though said in jest, made me stop and think. _Did_ I love Zach? When he'd first said the words hours ago, I hadn't been able to make myself answer, and I couldn't explain why. It wasn't because I'd doubted the honesty, the intensity, of his declaration. All of his actions, from following me all over the country to helping me escape last fall to making this crazy journey with me proved that he meant what he said. The way he teased me, the way he'd nicknamed me, the way he was so fiercely protective, made me believe him.

It was me I doubted. I liked to be near him, I liked the way he made me feel. I cared about him deeply, and it hurt me to see him hurting. But was that love? I just wasn't sure yet. And I didn't want to say something I didn't know was true. So instead, I joked back.

"Of course," I laughed, kissing him gently. He pulled me closer and kissed me more fiercely, as though he couldn't quite convince himself that I was real, as though he was afraid I would disappear if he didn't make sure our bodies were as intertwined as possible. But eventually he pulled away, and I took a gulp of air.

"We should focus," he said finally. "The best way to get what we both want is to finish this."

As I pulled out the sheets of paper on which we'd transcribed the journal entries a few months ago, I wondered what exactly it was that Zach wanted. Revenge? Answers? Closure? _Me? _And then I wondered if knowing would change how I felt about him.

"In the last one Matt wrote, he says he's going to Athens, right?" Zach asked, hanging his head over my shoulder to see and managing to casually place his arm around my waist in the process.

"Yeah," I said, shuffling to that page. "Here it is."

_Day 5,860_

_The Operatives received word that their asset in Athens has had a breakthrough. Operative Solomon has begun preparations to travel to Greece, but the Deputy Director of the CIA suspects The Operatives are still taking on the Circle on their own, so he has placed Operative Solomon on desk duty. Operative Morgan will go instead._

"You think it's in that one?" I asked.

"I think he moved it every time he went somewhere. And the new clue is probably coded into every entry where he says where he's going."

"The numbers," I said, unable to shake the feeling that if Liz were here she'd have solved it by now. "It has to be something with the numbers."

He nodded, and we both concentrated on the paper before us.

"What are you getting?" I asked, after a few minutes.

"Not much," he answered, frustrated. "I've tried just about as many substitutions as I can think of, and I've got nothing. Nothing that makes sense, anyway."

"Maybe it's not that hard," I suggested. "Maybe the first code is the test, and he figured that anyone who could solve that was supposed to find the second one."

"That's a stretch," Zach answered. "But I guess it's worth a try." He looked back at the paper. "If I count out the fifth letter, then the eighth from that, then the sixth from that and the one next to it, then repeat the pattern, I get a long string of letters. If I do the same thing with the string, I get 'Dons p Soel.' Which doesn't translate into anything and which anagrams into about a million things, none of which is particularly meaningful."

"The digits of the numbers add to nineteen. If you count every nineteenth letter you get a string of letters that anagrams into many things, including 'Secrets, Coverts'," I offered.

"Did he have a sense of humor?" Zach asked, meeting my eyes.

"Yeah," I smiled. "A great one."

"Then I think that's a joke."

"I think you're right," I answered. "What if we go one step simpler?"

"Well, if you count the fifth word, then the eighth word, then the sixth word and one next to it and repeat the pattern, you get 'That breakthrough to travel deputy. are on their placed will'."

"Interesting," I commented. "Does that mean he hid the journal with the will of the Deputy Director of Transportation?"

"I doubt it Cam," Zach said. "That's a pretty easy code to write, especially for someone like your dad. Don't you think he'd at least have used proper grammar?"

"You have a point," I agreed. "If you count from 'Day' though, you get 'Received. had begun preparations but the the Circle he operative'."

"The two 'the's'?" Zach pointed out, rolling his eyes. "And 'he operative'? I don't think so, Cam."

"What if we go one step _more _simple," I started to say. And then I picked up the paper and held it close to my face. Counted the spaces three more times to be sure, bolding the words in my head.

_Day 5,860_

_The Operatives received word that their asset in Athens has had a breakthrough. Operative Solomon has begun preparations __**to**__ travel to Greece, but the Deputy Director of the CIA suspects The Operatives are still taking on the __**Circle**__ on their own, so he has placed Operative Solomon on desk duty. Operative Morgan will go instead._

"Zach," I said quietly, "Nineteen words."

He took the paper from me, counting more times than I did. And then he read the message my father had left us, telling us the location of the journal. The message that didn't make any sense.

"To Circle," he said quietly, meeting my eyes. "Oh my God, Cammie," he whispered. "They already have it. They just don't know yet."

**Yes, I did work out all the "codes," because I need a life. Go ahead, try them.**


	24. Chapter 24

**Another long one! Sorry, less Zammie, but more information. And anyone who was confused by the code in the last one, I think I've sufficiently explained it here. Enjoy! And thanks for reading!**

"Could Matthew Morgan have hidden the third journal with the Circle somehow and them not known?" Zach demanded, barging into Mr. Solomon's hospital-esque room.

"Zach," I said, finally catching up with him (he had sprinted down from the tower). "Chill."

"No, Cammie," he snapped. "This changes the entire mission, and he knew this all along and didn't tell us. He knew your dad was alive. He knew she killed my father. He knew there was a third journal. I want to know what else he's keeping to himself."

"It's alright, Ms. Morgan," Mr. Solomon said slowly, opening his eyes to look at Zach and grimacing. "Mr. Goode has a fair point."

"You started this," Zach accused. "And now you're going to help us finish it."

I'd never seen Zach angry at Mr. Solomon. In fact I wasn't sure I'd ever seen Zach this angry before at all. But it's always the people you look up to the most who can let you down the hardest, so in a way it made sense. And in the back of my mind I knew Zach wasn't nearly as in control of his feelings as he pretended to be. And I knew Joe Solomon knew that too.

"If you'll allow me to speak, I'll tell you what I know." Zach fell silent, and Mr. Solomon continued. "We traded the third journal back and forth every week or so, the idea being that only one of us would know its location at any given time. It's a lot easier to withstand torture when you don't actually know the information for which they're interrogating you. Morbid, but a necessary precaution. Again, any time one of us left the country, that person would hide the journal, just in case he didn't return, usually somewhere it would be unlikely to be discovered, even if someone came after his partner. Then he'd code the clue into his journal and give that to his partner.

"As far as I know, Matt followed all of our usual procedures. As far as I know, he hid the third journal, and he gave his to me. And you found his clue, I see."

"So you didn't ever figure out what it meant?" Zach asked, skeptical. "Considering what a good spy you were, I find that difficult to believe."

"The further in we got, the more dangerous it became, and the vaguer our clues were. We'd had no occasion to use them before this."

"So your expert interpretation of the final clue would be what?" Zach demanded, still angry.

"That Matt hid the third journal with a Circle operative, unbeknownst to them. He was called in for a briefing two days before he left for Greece. Rachel didn't know that he was still posing as a double agent. Ostensibly, he could have hidden the journal then."

"And you think that's possible?"

"If anyone could have pulled it off, it was him," Mr. Solomon answered. "It's ingenious, really. Because if you were going to go searching for top-secret information that a rogue operative had collected about you, the last place you'd ever think to look would be…"

"In your own base," I cut him off.

"Exactly, Ms. Morgan."

"Your theory still has holes," Zach commented. "The Circle loses a lot of operatives to various situations. If the goal of hiding the journal was to make sure it survived, how could Matt be sure that whoever he picked to hide it with would still be around when one of you went to retrieve it?"

"It would have had to be someone who was low in seniority at the time, so that he could gain easy access to him or her. But it would also have had to be someone who was climbing quickly within the Circle, someone he knew would soon have a permanent place in the leadership," I offered. "That way he ensured that it would still be there even if neither of you could retrieve it for a long time."

"Oh my God, Joe," Zach said, shaking his head. "You think he hid it with _her._"

Mr. Solomon tried to nod. "I think so."

"And you didn't try to get it back before now?"

"It wasn't important. I mean, it was important, but it wasn't crucial. After they caught Matt I figured I was next, and I knew if I tried too hard to get to it, I'd blow my cover. And it wasn't like _we _didn't know everything the journal said. The entire purpose of the journal was so that if we both died, whoever followed would benefit from our years of work. So really, _I_ didn't need the journal unless I had something to add to it."

"And you weren't afraid she would find it in the meantime?"

"I was at first. But I trusted Matt completely, and if he thought it would be safe, I believed him. Clearly he was right. And there were also other…circumstances to consider. She knew about Alex, and I was afraid that eventually she'd…"

"Try to hurt me," Zach interrupted. "You were using me to get close to her. You were searching for the journal the entire time I knew you."

"I was," Mr. Solomon admitted. "But I was also trying to help you. I felt…guilty…about what Alex had done."

"_You _felt guilty that he lived his legend to the extreme and had a kid with a rising leader of the circle? I'm sure that's more than he felt."

"I think he loved _you,_" Mr. Solomon offered. "Even though he didn't love _her._"

Zach rolled his eyes. Then he continued with his interrogation.

"How did you end up at Gallagher?"

"Why do you need to know?"

"I need to know everything now. You've forced me to drastically change the scope of our mission, to make it a lot more dangerous than I anticipated, and we can't go into it without all of the information. So you're going to tell me why you started teaching at Gallagher. Now."

Mr. Solomon nodded, and I swear I saw the corner of his mouth twitch as he recognized the return of the spy he'd trained.

"I kept hearing rumors about a girl," he tried to shrug. "Then one day someone hacked into the database looking for Ms. Morgan and Rachel. I was on the phone with Rachel within the hour and on a plane to DC the next day. Something wasn't right, and I wasn't going to wait to find out what. I wasn't going to take the chance that they'd get to her first."

"Did my mother know why you were really coming back?" I asked, a question that had long puzzled me.

"No."

"I can't believe we're going to have to do this," Zach shook his head. "I never would have involved her if I'd known."

"You'd never had involved me if you'd known what, Zach?" I snapped. "What is it you always seem to think I'm incapable of? You're no better at this than I am."

"I know that, Cam," he said quietly, looking as though he wanted to reach across the cot and touch me. "I just don't want to see you get hurt."

Internally, I rolled my eyes. "You didn't answer the question, Zach. You never would have involved me if you'd known what?"

"I never would have involved you," he said, his eyes boring into mine. "If I'd known that we were going to have to steal the journal back. From my mother."

**Let me know what you guys think! I'm honestly just making this up as I go, so anyone is welcome to throw their two cents in. I love hearing from you all.**


	25. Chapter 25

**Sorry it's short, but I think you'll like it.**

"What the hell is _wrong_ with you?" I demanded, as soon as we were out of Mr. Solomon's hearing range (which I figured had to be pretty far). "I can't believe you just did that."

"What?" he asked coolly, still walking away from me.

"I don't know what you're doing, Zach," I said, grabbing his arm and forcing him to stop and face me. "But Mr. Solomon is on _our _side."

"Really, Cam?" he shot back. "And you can be sure of that how?"

"He…" I started to come back at him with a snappy retort, but nothing popped into my head. He'd known my father was alive. He'd known about Zach's parents. He'd known the Circle was looking for me. He'd known why. And he'd known where the third journal was. But he hadn't told anyone any of that. Not even us.

"That's what I thought," Zach said, pulling away and walking briskly in the other direction.

"He almost died for us." He froze at my words, took a deep breath, and slowly turned to face me. "Zach," I said quietly. "I know you're upset. I know you think he should have told us everything a long time ago. I know you're afraid of what's ahead of us. And I feel the same way. But I also know that you know that Joe Solomon is on our side."

He sighed and walked over to me, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close against him, as though he needed to assure himself that I was alive and whole.

"You're right, Cam," he whispered into my hair. "I'm sorry. I let my emotions run away with me."

"It's okay," I said, twisting my head so I could see his face. "It's completely understandable."

"But completely unacceptable. I'm a spy. I don't have that luxury anymore."

"You're also a person, Zach."

He pressed my head against his chest and rested his on top, and his voice, when he spoke, sounded so tired that for a moment I could've sworn there'd been some sort of time disruption and he was thirty years older.

"God, Cammie," he said, shaking his head in disbelief, as though he was admitting something to himself for the first time. "This is real now. Every tiny mistake could be the difference between life and death. And it's never me that gets hurt. Why is it never me?"

I didn't answer, because I knew what he wasn't saying, and it was more important than the words he spoke. What he wasn't saying was that he'd managed to convince himself that it was just an assignment before, that we were gambling with our grades and not our lives, and I had to admit I'd been doing the same thing. But pretending wasn't an option anymore. We'd been thrown out into the open now, completely unprotected. And Zach was afraid that one or both of us would get hurt or killed. And I had to admit I shared that fear.

"I just don't want to lose you," he breathed. "You're the only thing in my life that's ever been real. And I can't…I _won't _let them take that away from me. Not her. Not anyone. Ever."

He held me so tightly that for a moment I felt as though nothing in the world could ever touch me. That Zach would protect me from whatever was coming for us, that we'd make it through this, the two of us, alive.

"I love you, Cammie," he whispered.

And this time I realized something. I liked being with Zach, and I liked who I was when I was with him, how he brought out the best parts of me. I liked how emotional he was, behind his spy façade. I liked the way he smirked, the way he called me Gallagher Girl. I even liked the way he was always so paranoid about my safety. And then I realized that love isn't appreciating someone's good qualities. Love is seeing all of someone's faults, all of their idiosyncrasies, all of their weaknesses. And appreciating them in spite of all of that. Love is caring about someone so much that you hurt when they hurt, rejoice when they rejoice. Love is being willing to lay down your own life that someone else might live.

So this time, when Zach told me that he loved me, I was prepared. I pulled away just enough that I could look into his eyes as I spoke. And then I whispered back.

"I love you too, Zach," I said. And with every part of myself, I meant it.


	26. Chapter 26

**You may draw whatever conclusions you want from the beginning of this chapter, if you know what I mean. Personally, I think yes :) Enjoy and thanks for reading!**

It was almost four in the morning when she found us. My head was pillowed on Zach's chest, and his arms were wrapped around me. The breeze through the open window was cool, and the cold of the stones in our tower was strangely comforting, their texture far less uncomfortable that I'd thought it would be.

We'd slept there because we hadn't wanted to be found, and until my mother came trudging up the stairs that morning, our plan had worked. She opened the door tentatively, as though not quite sure what to expect, as though she was afraid she would barge in on us at an awkward moment.

But she'd forgotten that we're spies. We'd heard her when she'd first started coming up the stairs.

"Hey, Mom," I said quietly, sitting up and meeting her eyes.

She smiled sadly at me, an expression I couldn't quite interpret. Then she walked over to us and held out a piece of paper.

"Joe wanted me to give this to you," she said, pressing it into my palm. "You two should probably go soon. You've been here almost twenty-four hours."

"She's right, Cam," Zach said quietly. "While it's still dark."

I nodded and pulled myself to my feet, determined to do this the right way this time. "I love you, Mom," I whispered, pulling her close. "I'll be back. And I'll finish this."

"I love you too, Cameron," she answered, her voice perfectly controlled. "Be safe." She pulled away and leveled a look at Zach. "Take care of her," she ordered, the 'or else' obvious in her tone.

"With my life." Zach answered without breaking eye contact, his voice completely serious. "I will."

She nodded silently, then turned on her heel and marched down the stairs.

"We should go," Zach said quietly, getting to his feet and taking my hand. "Before the sun comes up."

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "Your father was based in DC when he disappeared, right?"

"Yeah," I answered. "How many Circle bases are there?"

"Enough to make this nearly impossible," he answered. "But your father wouldn't have gone to a base for his briefing, not if he was that close to DC. Too many people who could be watching to chance leading anyone back to the caves. They'd have met in some sort of public location, where there would be lots of people going about their own business. Which means he would have slipped the journal to my mother directly.

"But that's what I don't understand," he continued. "If she knew was a double agent, she was already looking for the information he had. Don't you think she would have noticed a book full of secrets on the Circle written in code?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "If he'd slipped the journal into her bag or something, she'd have found it later and known what it was. In which case, she wouldn't be looking for us."

"This isn't getting us anywhere," Zach commented. "What'd Joe give you?"

I pass him the paper, and he reads the numbers that are scrawled there, then raises his eyes to meet mine. "It's a routing number," we say together. Then I fall silent and wait for Zach to explain.

"He's giving us his stash, Cam," he offers. "Joe Solomon's financing our mission."

It had never occurred to me to wonder where Zach was getting the money for our adventure before, but it did then.

"How were we paying for this before?"

"With mine. Every spy sets up a few thousand dollars under a preferably unknown alias in case they have to make a run for it," he said, looking surprised. "And you keep adding to it as you get paid in hopes that if you ever need to go off grid, you have something to start with. You honestly didn't know that?"

"Where did you get your start up money?" I asked, ignoring his comment. "You haven't officially been on any missions yet."

"I had a previous life, Cam," he reminded, rolling his eyes. "I went on missions for _them._"

"We should go," I said, not wanting to think about Zach's 'previous life'. "Even if we don't know where we're going."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Even if we're searching after a book my mother can't possibly have."

An idea started to take shape in my head. Joe Solomon had said there was a third _journal. _We'd already found the first two, and we'd held them in our hands, turned their coded pages. But a "journal", by definition, was merely a recording of daily events and information. Joe Solomon and my father were smart. They wouldn't have chosen to hide their information in anything that could be easily damaged. And then I knew.

"Zach," I said, meeting his eyes. "We're not looking for a book."


	27. Chapter 27

_**Sorry, everyone. Writer's block combined with 2 weeks of midterms. I'm warning you now that updates will be few and far between as November is a crazy month for me with school. Sorry this one is so short, but hopefully there will be another one this weekend. Thanks for reading and being patient with me!**_

Zach froze, his back to me. When he turned around, three whole seconds later, his eyes were like daggers. But I knew that he knew I was right.

"Is there anything he's actually told us?" he snapped, his anger obviously not directed at me. "Again and again, Cam. Now we don't even f_g know what we're looking for." He paused for an instant, concentrating on keeping his hands from shaking and slowing his breathing. Then he shook his head, visibly more relaxed, but no less angry. "I should go down there and wring his neck. Or worse."

"Zach…" I started, but he cut me off.

"Every time he doesn't tell us something, this gets more and more dangerous," he snapped at me, grabbing both of my arms and forcing me to look at him. "Why don't you get that? What do I have to do to make you understand?"

I pulled away, irritated.

"What do _I _have to do to make you see that that isn't important to me?"

But my words only made him angrier. "He could be dead, Cammie. Do you think he'd want you risking your life for nothing?" He forced himself to calm down, lowering his voice. "Joe promised him that he would protect you. And I promised Joe that I would do the same. That's not a promise I plan on breaking. Not as long as I'm alive."

"Zach," I said quietly, meeting his eyes. "It's not just about him. I can't run from them forever. You know that. And as much as I have to know the truth, I also have to end this. They managed to take his life, whether or not he's still breathing. I'm not about to let them take mine. You know that."

He reached for my hands, a peace offering. "I do," he answered apologetically. "But I also know how good she is. I know she has a plan. And I know we're walking into a trap. And that's not…"

"Easy for you to do," I finished. "Because you don't want me getting hurt. I know."

"You don't, Cammie," he sighed. "But it's enough that you try to."

"We could go back down there and ask him, you know." I suggested.

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I promise I'll be a better spy from now on."

"I promise I'll be a better protectee from now on."

He laughed and was about to lean in and kiss me when both our transmitters vibrated. Again, he reached his first.

He glanced down for half a second, then grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the passage.

"We have to go now," he said as he moved. "They're coming."

"To the mansion?" I asked, skeptical.

"To Roseville," he corrected. "Which is worse."

I couldn't deny that. "They spread out to serve as lookouts," I said, suddenly realizing where Liz, Bex, and Macey had been during our visit.

"Yep," Zach answered, as we moved through the passage. "You've got some pretty amazing friends, Gallagher Girl."

"Yeah," I whispered, picturing all three of them in my head. "Yeah."


	28. Chapter 28

_**Second promised chapter for the weekend. I can't believe you guys have passed 150 reviews! Thank you to my amazing readers, you all are so awesome. Hope you enjoy. Keep reading and reviewing!**_

We ended up on the mall, sitting in front of the American History Museum. The sun was shining and tourists were swarming the place, eager to get their sightseeing in before the D.C. July heat reached its maximum.

"Why are we here?" I asked, as we sat on the bench, pretending to be exhausted tourists.

"Because it'd be hard for them to find us," Zach answered, as if it were obvious. I was annoyed.

"There's no deeper reason for us being here?"

"Besides the fact that it's the closest highly populated place to Roseville?" he said. "No."

"Come on, Zach," I protested. "Every time you've taken us somewhere before it's been for a reason. You can't honestly expect me to believe you picked this spot for the crowd factor."

And then I felt her nearby, turned and caught a glimpse of her glossy black hair in the crowd. Macey.

"You're late," Zach mumbled, as she suddenly appeared behind us, placing her sunscreen bottle on the back of the bench and slowly applying her mother's most recent formula.

"Yeah, well, the metro's a b-h, especially in tourist season. Get over it, Goode."

"What are you _doing _here, Macey?" I demanded.

"Chill, Gallagher Girl," Zach said, putting his hand on my arm. "I told her to meet us."

"I'd figured that much, thanks," I snapped, wrenching my arm away from him and staring pointedly at Macey, waiting for an explanation.

"Just wanted to meet your new boyfriend, Tiffany," she smiled, putting the cap back on her bottle and dropping it into her drawstring bag. "Kind of rude for you not to introduce him to your cousin when you're staying with us."

"No," I said forcefully. "We're _not…_" I started, but she shot me a look that clearly said, _Play along, for God's sake. _"I mean," I corrected. "Marcie, I'd like you to meet my new boyfriend, Calvin Smith."

Zach shook Macey's hand and then slipped his own back into his pocket, but I knew it wasn't the right time to ask him what they'd just exchanged. Although I had to admit that I was kind of angry that no one had let me in on the plan. Then he touched his earlobe, surreptitiously slipping a comms unit into place.

"You seem pretty cool, Marcie," Zach grinned. "But Tiff and I really want to see some of the museums today. Can we catch up with you later?"

"Sure," Macey smiled sweetly. "Can I borrow her for a second first, though?"

Zach's eyes said something along the lines of, 'Not if you want to live,' but he nodded anyway. "Of course."

"Macey," I whispered frantically as soon as we were out of his earshot.

"Not now," she snapped. "They're on their way, so we need to make this fast. Solomon said he told you something important. He wouldn't tell us what."

"It's safer if you don't know."

"I thought you'd say that," she answered cheerily. "But Liz has been doing some microchip research for a project, and there was one that was stolen from a testing facility less than a month after Alex Goode disappeared. Coincidence?"

"No," I answered. "Which one?"

"Charma Labs," she answered.

I nodded. "Have her keep following that."

Macey nodded. "I thought you'd say that, too." We walked back in Zach's direction, and he stood up a little too quickly when he saw us, meeting us instead of waiting for us to come to him.

"Nice meeting you, Marcie," he smiled. "We'll see you at 5 for dinner, okay?" Definitely a code. My guess is that the Circle agents were less than five minutes away.

"Sure thing," Macey smiled. And then she turned and disappeared into the crowd.

Zach grabbed my hand and led me over to the service door of the museum, quickly picking the lock and taking us into the air-conditioned building. He guided me through a maze of exhibits and out a back door, then he looked around, unsure. So I took the lead. After all, I had lived in DC for several years before I came to Gallagher. And I was a spy.

I snuck us onto one of those resident-irritating hop-on-hop-off tourist busses and got off at union station. Personally, I've never understood what the big deal about union station is, as there isn't really anything there, but most of the bus companies don't ask for my opinion on D.C.'s tourist attractions. They wouldn't like my version of the city anyway.

We walked calmly but purposefully in the direction of the MARC trains that run to Baltimore, bought our tickets, and slipped aboard.

"That was nice, Gallagher Girl," Zach offered, when we were moving away from one city and toward the other. "Any particular reason for Baltimore?"

"We aren't secretly meeting any of my friends and putting them in danger, if that's what you mean," I snapped.

"Chill," Zach said softly, casually stretching his arm out and resting it on the seat behind me. "We had it all planned out. Nothing was going to happen. The others still had eyes on the Circle agents. But we needed something only she could do."

I raised my eyebrows, and he brought his lips close to my ear.

"The routing number," he explained. "Macey pulled some money from it into a few offshore accounts and then into hers and got the cash." He fingered what looked like a rather large wad of US currency in his pocket.

"You used Macey as a money launderer," I said, my voice flat. "Great."

"She volunteered. I asked her how to move money from an account under the radar, and, being the daughter of two very rich and less than law-abiding people, she knew. And she had the resources to do it."

"And if they trace the account back to the McHenrys?"

Zach rolled his eyes. "They won't. Clearly you've never embezzled money. Or evaded your taxes. Rich people become that way because they know how not to get caught." I was still annoyed, but I believed Zach enough to relax and lean against him. After all, I hadn't gotten much sleep at the mansion.

"She'll be fine, Cam," he said. "Don't worry." He hesitated for a moment, then repeated his question. "But seriously, Cam, why Baltimore?"

I smiled and twined my fingers in with his. "Oh you know," I answered mischievously, "It's a decent sized city. It'll be hard for them to find us."


	29. Chapter 29

_**Sorry for the hiatus, everyone. I had a million projects/finals during November and December. I finally got my hands on my copy of the book though, so I'll try and explain the pieces that don't mesh with the books in the next few chapters. Keep reading/reviewing, and thanks for reading!**_

It was still early when we arrived in Baltimore, but after I led Zach around the city for several hours, it started to get dark. When the sun began to set, we headed toward our destination. Zach was annoyed. He protested for the first three hours of our wandering, asking me questions and trying to get an answer out of me, but I didn't budge. At the start of the fourth hour, he refused to speak to me. But that was fine, because I didn't need any of his help. He may know the roads of most major cities, but I knew the roads of Baltimore pretty well. And I knew how to get to Charma Labs.

I'd been there before, more than once, actually. Charma plays a major role in developing technology for the defense department. It employs many of the research track alumni, and I remembered how Liz had been like a kid in a candy store during our visit in eighth grade. The security wouldn't be easy to get past, but I was fairly sure we could manage it. All we needed to do was break into the records office, which contained hard copies of all sales, and where any evidence of a theft would have been recorded. We could search the surveillance videos for anomalies, but we wouldn't find anything. My father and Mr. Solomon were too good for that.

It took Zach far longer than I'd expected to figure out where we were going, but when he did, he wasn't happy.

"You've got to be kidding me."

I ignored him.

"Cammie. Are you insane?"

I continued to ignore him.

"Cameron Morgan. Look at me."

I shot him a cool glance and continued to walk. He gave me two seconds, then grabbed my shoulders and turned me around to face him. I could have broken his grip, but there were enough people around that I didn't want to cause a scene.

"No."

"No to what, Zach?" I asked innocently.

"We're not attempting to infiltrate Charma. That's practically suicide. If you're looking for the government to pick you up, that's exactly where you go."

"Okay," I answered. "You can wait in the bushes and play lookout."

"What are you even looking for?"

"Information regarding a microchip that was stolen around the time your father was killed."

"The third journal," Zach whispered, understanding. "It's impossible."

"It's not impossible," I answered. "Just challenging."

"Cam, I'm not letting you do this."

"Then it looks like I'll have to immobilize you while I break in. Suit yourself."

Charma was located on a large lot on the edge of the city, surrounded by an electrified fence and state of the art security cameras. If you managed to clear the fence, you were facing a fortress-like building. Fortunately, the records office was near an air duct, but those weren't easy to access either. Steel ceilings and welded grates made it nearly impossible for anyone to get into the ventilation system. Cameras and motion sensors were hidden in the ducts as well, just in case anyone happened to get that far. And if you set them off? Well, let's just say it wouldn't end well for you.

Naturally, the first thing I did was consult Liz. Using her device, I sent her a simple message: Charma's weakness?

Her nearly instantaneous response told me that she already had the building plans for the complex in front of her, and that she'd most likely been scouring them since I met with Macey that morning: You need to crash the whole system quietly. Best access point is the southeast corner. Be quick. Cameras.

So I approached the southeast corner of the complex, hiding in the woods that were a good 300 feet from the fence, creating a nice open space that any potential thief would have difficulty crossing undetected.

"There's a blind spot exactly in the corner, but only for a few seconds," Zach offered, settling behind me. "How do we make it through the fence?"

"Disrupt the current somehow," I suggested. "Or get over without touching the fence."

"You have a total of around 20 seconds while the cameras sweep away and back. If I toss you over the fence, can you crash the entire system before the cameras see me?"

"Reroute, not crash. And yes, I think so."

"You think so? How are you getting through the concrete?"

I pulled Liz's miniature charges from my backpack and held them out to Zach.

"Baby bombs," he smiled. "Nice."

"Ready?" I asked, eager to get this over with.

Zach followed the cameras with his eyes, and the second both cameras pulled away from the corner, forming a blind spot, we darted forward. I stepped into his hand and pushed off the ground, and his muscular arms flipped me over the top of the fence. I curled into a ball in midair, hitting the ground and rolling over my shoulder. Then I moved to line my charges over the edges of the panel.

But it wasn't there.

A few chunks of concrete siding were on the ground, but the wires were intact. And the tiny silver clips told me they'd already been rerouted to a mobile device.

"Zach," I whispered. "We're not the only ones here."

"You have ten seconds Cam. Get me through the fence and we'll worry about it later."

So I did the only thing I could. I rerouted the rerouted signals to my own mobile device.

"Clear," I called as I shut off the current to the fence, and Zach quickly scaled the iron bars and was by my side. As soon as he was, I reset the fence. The same way our predecessor must have done.

Zach examined the rerouted signal wires carefully, then turned to me, his face unreadable.

"This is good work, Cam. This isn't an amateur we're dealing with." I could practically hear him tack the words _not like us _onto the end of his sentence.

"I know," I answered. But the system isn't showing any signs of an intruder, even rerouted."

"He shut the whole thing down. That makes our job easier. But he'll know someone else is here. He'll be looking for us."

"Or just trying to get away undetected."

Zach shot me a look, and I had to admit that I knew he was right. Everywhere we'd gone so far, someone had been waiting for us. And this wasn't likely to be any different. But we were on this side of the fence now, and we didn't have a lot of options. We had to keep moving forward. And Zach knew that too.

I watched as he moved down the side of the building toward the single air duct, placed miniature charges around the edges, and let them separate the grate from the building. Then we squeezed ourselves into the tiny space and moved in the direction of the records room, which was deep in the recesses of the building. But I knew the layout of the building well, and by visualizing it below me, I knew exactly how to move through the ductwork to our destination.

One more set of tiny charges released the grate near the records room, although Zach's glove nearly caught fire trying to keep the grate from falling into the hall below. We dropped lightly to the floor, moving toward the records room.

"Wait," Zach whispered, grabbing my hand. "Fingerprints."

"Whose?"

"I'm guessing that guy," he offered, pointing to the plaque that read _Managing Director of Recording._ I wrapped a piece of tape around my finger, pulled a print from the door knob of the office, and pressed it to the finger print scanner on the door. The door opened into a sort of air lock, this one designed to keep out light. And on the other side of the lock, there was a dark room with small blue lights, just bright enough to see make out the labels on the files. And the dark, lean, figure in the middle of the room.

It grabbed me before I could even breathe, and in an instant, it held me firmly in front of it, a gun pressed to my temple. Zach's was drawn as well, the one he'd kept after Reno, but he placed in on the ground almost instantly.

"Where are the others?" The voice snarled, revealing that my captor was a woman. "How many of them are there and where."

Zach remained silent.

"Don't make me," she warned, cocking the gun. "How many and where?"

There was something about her voice that seemed familiar, but her tone disguised it enough that it was hard to place. The room was dark, and I was fairly sure that neither Zach nor the woman who held me could make out the other's face. For an instant, I was sure we'd been taken, that the woman with a gun to my head was Zach's mother. But I was wrong.

"We're alone," Zach said. "There are no others."

"Goode?"

The recognition in her voice was clear, but her false tone dropped, and I recognized the woman behind me.

"Yes," Zach said quietly, stepping forward.

Her grip slackened slightly and she spun me around to face her. Then her arms tightened again, angry this time. And when I caught a glimpse of her eyes, and the fury buried in them, I knew I was going to have to do a lot of explaining. To my aunt.


	30. Chapter 30

_**Sorry it's short, guys, but I promise there will be longer ones in the future. Enjoy. And keep reading and reviewing. I love reading your reviews. Thanks!**_

Aunt Abby didn't ask questions, at first. She just dropped my arms, lifted a file from on top of one of the shelves, slipped it into some sort of hard cover folder, dropped it into a bag, and turned around again.

"You're coming with me. Both of you."

Zach shot me a look, but neither of us dared question Aunt Abby, so we followed her out of the room and into the hallway.

"Airshaft," she muttered. "Conventional, but nice."

Then she slipped the bag over her shoulder, bounced once on her toes, and sprung into the air, catching the lip of the opening and pulling herself the rest of the way up. Zach and I followed her out the way we'd come, back to the electrical box. She glanced over at us, disabled the fence, and signaled us to go. We didn't waste any time. Then she slipped on a pair of electrical gloves, pulled the silver clips from the wires, and pulled herself up and over the fence, landing on her feet on the other side.

"Run," she ordered, and we took off beside her, a deliberate zigzag through the woods, ending at an unmarked black car. "Get in," she said, fiercely, and we complied, allowing Aunt Abby to take us prisoner. Because there really wasn't another option, and as much as I was afraid of having to face my aunt, I was more afraid of the contracted guards that would now be converging on the facility. And because sometimes, you just have to trust people.

"How did you know?" she asked, as though we were enemy spies, not teenagers, one of whom is related to her. Although I guess that in a way she was right. When you shed your governmental protection and drop off the grid, no one really knows what side you're on. Sometimes you don't either.

"We didn't," Zach said calmly. "Does the file you stole have anything to do with a stolen microchip, by any chance?"

Aunt Abby's head snapped around and her eyes met Zach's, with an indecipherable stare.

"You're supposed to destroy it, aren't you?" Zach asked, quietly.

Aunt Abby nodded.

"But instead you stole it."

"The records are printed on photosensitive paper," she answered. "To destroy it, you have to steal it first."

"But you were very careful to keep light from touching it. You want to see it first. Who asked you to destroy it, Agent Cameron?"

"It was an order."

"But," I said, hesitantly, "The CIA can request any records they want. They don't have to be stolen or destroyed."

"I didn't say it was an order from the CIA. It was an order sent to a suspected circle agent that we happened to intercept. Obviously, if they wanted something destroyed, we had to get to it first."

"Who's we?" Zach asked, wary.

"Rachel and Joe. Joe said it was important."

Zach met my eyes.

"We need to see it," I said, quietly. "Aunt Abby, you have to give us the document."

"The microchip is the key," Zach said. "Agent Cameron, you're going to give it to us. Right now."

Aunt Abby pulled the car over, moved it off the road and onto the grassy shoulder.

"And why would I do that, Mr. Goode?"

"What if you're one of them?"

"I'm not," Aunt Abby rolled her eyes. "What if _you're _one of them?"

"I am," Zach shrugged. "But I'm the right one."

"Why didn't Mr. Solomon just tell us about the microchip?" I cut in, interrupting their silent staring contest. "If we need the information on the circle, why is he keeping so much from us? Why isn't he telling us the whole story?"

Aunt Abby turned to me, and her eyes narrowed. "What _did_ he tell you?" she asked suspiciously. So I recounted Mr. Solomon's statements, condensing them into a five minute story.

"That's interesting," Aunt Abby said slowly, turning my words over in her head.

"And why's that?" Zach asked, meeting her eyes.

But Aunt Abby didn't respond. Instead, she snapped her head around for half a second, pulled Zach into the front seat, and slipped out the door of the car before I could react. Zach saw them too.

"Go." Aunt Abby ordered, and Zach didn't hesitate for a moment. Before I could really process what was happening, we were speeding away from the scene, leaving my aunt to face the Circle agents, who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, on her own.


	31. Chapter 31

_**Tried to do some explaining in this one, so I hope it's not too confusing. And don't worry, more Zammie soon. Thanks to everyone who reads and reviews. You guys are the best readers ever.**_

"Zach!" I shouted. "We can't leave her there."

But Zach barely turned to look at me. "My first priority is to protect you. She agrees."

"Zach…" I started, but he didn't let me finish.

"We can't go back for her, Cammie!" He shouted. "And she doesn't want us to. Didn't you see what happened back there? She pulled me into the front seat and told me to go. Abby knows what she's doing. If we go back now, we put her in even more danger."

"They're going to kill her," I said.

"No they're not," Zach said quietly. "She knows too much."

Which is worse. But I didn't say it, because we both knew that already.

Zach drove for over an hour, zig-zagging his way through Baltimore at a breathtaking speed. About a minute into our drive, he ordered me down on the floor. I didn't argue because I knew he was right. If there was any chance that they didn't know where I was, we had to keep it that way.

But every second I spent in the back of that car, I grew more and more anxious for Aunt Abby. I tried to follow the turns of the vehicle, compare them to the map in my head, but Zach was too good and I couldn't keep up. And I couldn't stop seeing my Aunt crumpled on the pavement over a year ago.

"Hold on, Cam," Zach said softly, somehow sensing my tension. "Abby's good. There's a small chance she wasn't taken. That she got away."

"How would we know?" I whispered, almost too afraid to hope.

"The signal," Zach answered. "We had a plan."

"You had a _plan_?" It took all my self-control to keep myself from screaming at him.

"Yeah. A Seven-Eleven."

"Zach…"

"Not now, Cam."

But I snuck a glance up from where I was sprawled on the floor of the backseat. And then I saw it. The green and orange sign. Zach slowed the car as we drove closer. It was one of those gas stations on a corner that people pull through so they don't have to wait for the stoplight. Always useful if you're trying to outrun someone or lose a tail. But tonight it was useful for a different reason. Tonight it was useful because of the small woman in a hooded sweatshirt who was reading a newspaper on a bench against the wall of the convenience store. Zach didn't stop the car, but the woman saw it anyway and timed her steps so she reached the car right as it passed her, pulled open the front passenger door, and slipped inside. We were back on the road in less than 30 seconds.

"Hey, squirt," my aunt said, craning her neck around to see me. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I answered, relieved. "You?"

"Never been better. Nothing gets the heart pumping like a good brawl with half a dozen Circle agents."

I rolled my eyes at her sarcasm, then squinted at her. I could make out a few bruises on her arms and a fresh cut on her cheek, but nothing too serious. And then I remembered.

"How did Zach know where to find you?"

Aunt Abby held up seven fingers, then two. "I told him," she answered offhandedly. She caught my look of surprise, because I remembered the distrustful glares my aunt used to send in Zach's direction. But she merely shrugged and said, "We had a conversation a long time ago."

"Actually, Abby's the one who convinced me to go with you instead of trying to protect you from a distance," Zach answered*.

"You _knew_?" I asked, slightly irritated.

"Yep," Aunt Abby said, as though it were nothing. Which I guess, compared to fending off a bunch of Circle agents, it was.

But a good spy always stays focused. So I did.

"Before you got out of the car, you were about to tell us something," I reminded. "After I told you what Mr. Solomon told us."

Abby nodded. "I was," she said slowly.

"First things first though," Zach interrupted. "Abby. They sent someone to destroy the document about the microchip. You intercepted that person and stole the document before they could get their hands on it. I assume Mrs. Morgan provided you with that intelligence?"

"Yes. And yes."

"The Circle agents came to see what had happened to the agent they sent. You gave yourself up to keep them from finding their missing agent and identifying us and because you hoped to gain some of their identities so you could follow their actions quietly. I'm assuming the missing Circle agent is incapacitated and in the trunk of this car?"

"Yes. And Yes again," my aunt nodded. "Very nice, Goode."

"So the Circle knows that all the information that Joe and Matt uncovered was stored on a microchip. The same microchip that was stolen from Charma Labs years ago. Do they know that they have it?"

"Yes. And No. That's why they want you. Or Cammie, anyway. Their goal is to find the microchip and destroy it."

"Then why destroy a document that puts us on its trail?" Zach asked, genuinely curious.

"They don't want you to find it first. They think you know something that will help _them_ to find the chip so they can destroy it. They want to lure you in for "questioning," not help you to find the secrets that could bring them down. _They _have to be the ones to find those secrets."

"That's what Joe thinks?" Zach's eyes met hers.

"Yes."

"Okay," Zach answered. "Your turn, Cammie."

I was so surprised that I almost forgot what I was going to ask. But almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And firing squads, but only if you're the one being executed.

"What were you about to tell us?"

"Easy," Abby smiled. "Joe Solomon lied to you."

I fell silent for a moment. Because it had never even crossed my mind.

"Matt wasn't with the Circle, Cam, at least not until much later. You should have known that from the journal entries—yes, I've seen them," she said, anticipating my next reaction. But she was a spy, and a really good one at that, so I shouldn't really have been surprised. "Alex recruited Joe not long after Joe joined the circle, and Joe brought Matt into the plot when he was faced with a problem and Matt was getting suspicious. He convinced Matt to become a double agent, and the three of them worked toward bringing down the Circle from the inside. About two years later, Alex's body washed up in a river in Budapest, along with that of a former leader of the Circle who had tried to run from the group years before and whom Alex had been developing as an asset. Everything from there on is true. There is a third journal, it's on the microchip, and the Circle has it."

There was silence for another 3.45 seconds as Zach and I contemplated what my aunt was saying. He was the first to speak.

"Well your story is more plausible," Zach said. "And you're right. We should have caught the journal discrepancy. But there was no reason for Joe to do that," Zach said, considering. "Unless…"

"Unless it was a lesson," I said quietly. "A test."

Because all of a sudden I could see it clearly. Mr. Solomon had given us a story that made sense, that answered all of our questions, but that had a flaw in it. A story that contradicted what we already knew about my father. A story that gave us an explanation, a way to understand the pictures that we'd found. A story that sounded like truth, drew our attention away from the facts, and was in fact, just a story. We'd trusted him, let our guard down for a moment, believed he was telling us the truth. And that was when I knew. Joe Solomon had tried to teach us the most important lesson of all.

"And we failed."

_***If you want to read Zach and Abby's conversation, check out my latest one-shot, **__**Taurus**__**.**_


	32. Chapter 32

_**Hope you all enjoy. I feel like this chapter is the beginning of the end. I know more now about how it's going to go. But I still want your input. Read and review please! And thanks everyone for reading.**_

"Yeah," Zach said quietly. He drove in silence for a few seconds, then turned to Abby. "Now what?"

"We're going to a CIA safehouse," she said nonchalantly.

Zach slammed on the brakes. "_We?_"

"Yes. At least temporarily. And if you don't think I'm capable of making that happen, Goode, you don't know me very well."

We both knew she was right, that if Abby wanted something she would find a way to make it happen. And neither of us really wanted to mess with that.

"Where?" Zach asked, his tone clipped and irritated. Abby rattled off an address, and nine and a half minutes later, we were pulling into a normal looking garage. If you ignored the retinal scanners, that is.

But Zach was still wary.

"Who all knows we're here?" He asked, nervously.

Abby rolled her eyes. "Rachel, Joe, and I," she said. "I'm a professional, Goode. Give me some credit."

Zach nodded an apology and got out of the car. But he kept the gun from Nevada with him, and Abby didn't protest. The two of us followed, presenting fingers for the DNA test required to enter the house. It was your average two-story townhouse, but we really didn't go any further than the kitchen. Almost as soon as we walked in, Zach sat down and started asking questions.

"Joe lied to us," he said quietly. "How do we know you're telling the truth?"

Abby rolled her eyes. "Joe was trying to teach you a lesson. That you can't trust anyone. So I guess the right answer is, you don't. But I am."

"What do you know about the microchip?"

"Nothing," my aunt answered. "You two interrupted me before I could look at the file. And it can only be read under a special light, or the paper disintegrates."

"Cam," Zach said, turning to me. "Can Liz replicate the lights in the records room at Charma?"

But before I could answer, my aunt smiled.

"Turns out she can," she said. "And she already has."

Aunt Abby pulled a small flashlight from her pocket and flicked it on, flashing a blue beam of light across the linoleum. I hesitated for a moment, but then I realized that this meant Abby had had to convince my friends, namely Bex, to go along with the plan. So I pulled the thick curtains over the bulletproof windows and flipped off the lights.

Zach slipped the folder from Aunt Abby's bag, and she flicked the light on and directed the beam at the surface of the table, just past the file. We waited on bated breath as Zach opened the folder, revealing two sheets of paper that, amazingly, did not disintegrate under Liz's light.

The first was a standard theft report, detailing the type of infiltration, date, suspected time, evidence, and stating the item stolen. A Charm6000 microchip. The second page told us what that was.

A tiny piece of plastic, the size of a pinky fingernail, is holding all the information we have on the Circle. But that's not the important part. The chip was designed for use in humans. It was supposed to be implanted and then accessed remotely. And it can't be read by a scanner. No enemy agent could find it unless they knew the frequency.

"Not possible," Zach said, quietly. "She'd have noticed if they tried to put the chip in her."

"You're right," Abby said, looking at him. "And putting that much information inside a person, who could die at any moment, would be stupid."

And then I could see it in my head, those moments on the roof, those moments at Blackthorne. I could see Zach's mother in my head in perfect detail. And I knew where the chip was.

But I couldn't tell Zach in front of Abby. Sure, she was on our side, but I'd learned from Joe Solomon's latest lesson. You can't trust anyone. Abby was out. She couldn't know. But there was one thing I wasn't sure about. The "anyone" I couldn't trust…did that include Zach? Because deep down I was still a spy. And so was he. And a part of my brain couldn't quite rule out the possibility that he was using me to find the chip. And that then he would betray me. So I kept quiet.

Zach slid the papers back inside the folder, and Abby clicked the flashlight off and flicked the lights back on. And I pretended I didn't know anything. And then Zach spoke.

"Tell me about Rome."

It was an odd question, and for a moment I couldn't figure out what this had to do with anything. And then I saw Zach fingering his gun. And I realized it was a test. Abby had seen the paper. Abby knew what we were looking for. And Zach was trying to make sure she was really on our side. Or else…I thought back to Reno, and then forced my brain back to the present. He wouldn't kill Abby, I told myself. But I hadn't thought he would kill the man in Reno either. And I was wrong. My concern must have showed in my face, but when Abby met my eyes she only gave a reassuring smile. And then she turned to Zach.

"Rome. And an assassination attempt on the Pope?" Zach's face didn't change. "You're referring, I'm sure, to the mission that started this, right Zach? When Joe Solomon was supposed to kill me?"

Zach didn't answer, but my Aunt was unperturbed.

"Joe Solomon and another Circle agent were sent on a mission to assassinate the Pope. And I was sent to stop them. Joe…recognized me, and he knew why I was there. And he was supposed to kill me before I could stop the agent he was with. But he didn't. I saved the Pope, and Joe claimed he hadn't seen me. And they told him to hunt me down, to find out how I knew so much about the Circle, how I was able to find them. And that's when he went to Matt."

"Why didn't Joe kill you?" Zach asked.

The corner of my aunt's mouth twitched, as though she was remembering something amusing. "I'm not entirely sure," she answered. "But we had a thing once.*** **That was how he knew me."

Zach drew his gun and leveled it at Abby, stepping closer to the table. Then he slipped the papers out of the folder, letting them turn to dust on before us. I held my breath and willed him not to do anything stupid.

"Cam," he said, slowly backing away from Abby. "Let's go."

I stepped past him, making my way slowly toward the back door of the safe house, the one with no cameras focused on it, and he followed, gun still pointed at Abby. We reached the door, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Don't follow," he ordered, his eyes locked with Abby's.

"Be careful," my aunt answered back.

Then Zach lowered his gun and followed me as we fled, out of the safehouse and into the dangerous night.

_***If you're interested in Joe and Abby's "thing," check out my oneshot "Luck of the Irish." Although I'm warning you, IT'S RATED M FOR A REASON. Only read it if you are an adult. **_


	33. Chapter 33

_**Happy almost 2011 to all my awesome readers. It's been so much fun writing for you the last few months. Keep reading and reviewing. You guys are the greatest audience ever. Enjoy :)**_

Zach didn't speak. Not as he hotwired a car on the street. Not as we got into it and he drove us away. Not as we passed the edge of Baltimore and headed north. Not one word.

He was thinking, though. When you're a spy, you're always thinking. But in that one moment, I knew everything. I knew why the Circle wanted me alive. I knew how they planned to use Zach. And I knew where the chip was. I knew.

And yet I didn't. I didn't know if my father was still alive, as she'd said. I didn't know how I was going to bring down the Circle. And I didn't know if Zach was really on my side. I knew I loved Zach, and deep down, I knew that he loved me too. But I didn't know if I could trust him.

I could fight him off. If I did it right then, when it was just the two of us, the odds were in my favor. I was a Gallagher Girl, after all. Or I could take a chance. I could hope that Zach was on my side. I could hope that everything he'd told me had been true. I could hope Zach wasn't taking me to a mass of Circle agents and handing me over.

When he pulled off of the Jersey turnpike three hours later and got out of the car, I followed, keenly aware of the gun that was still tucked into his belt.

"Run," he ordered, turning to look at me.

I didn't move.

"Cam," he said, uncertain. "Come on, we have to get out of here. They won't be far behind us and we can hide better on foot."

"No, Zach," I said quietly. "How do I know you're not taking me to them."

His eyes met mine with a betrayed expression.

"Spy." I pointed at him, the same way he'd pointed at himself what seemed like a century ago.

"Cam," he said quietly, his eyes pleading. "We have to talk. I know. But not here. Not now." He sighed. "I promise, I swear to you, that I've meant everything I've said. You take the gun. You lead. But we have to get out of here, or they'll find us."

So I did what any self-respecting spy would have done when confronted with a boy-man-spy who's either fiercely protective or delivering you to the enemy. I took the gun and ran. And Zach followed.

We ran for an hour, zig-zagging through nature preserves and deserted woods. And when we finally stopped, we were miles from anything. Exactly the way I wanted. Quiet enough that we'd be able to talk without anyone overhearing, and that we'd hear anyone approaching before they heard us. Quiet enough that you could kill someone and no one would find the body. At least not for a really long time.

"Now," I said, turning to face Zach. "We talk."

"The chip," Zach nodded. "They think…"

"They think the chip is in me."

"Yeah," Zach said quietly. "The plan was for us to get progressively closer, for them to lure us in. So that they could…"

His voice trailed off, unable to finish his sentence. Unable to say the words out loud. _So that they could find the chip, remove it, and get rid of anyone who knew it existed. Including one Cameron Morgan._

We said the next words together, at the exact same time.

"They're wrong."

"My dad wouldn't have done that," I said quietly. "He wouldn't have put me in danger, not like that."

"And you're forgetting the last clue, Cam," Zach reminded. "To Circle."

And then I understood. Zach thought it was him. That the real reason Joe Solomon had mentored him, the real reason Joe Solomon had turned him, was because he had two decades of information on the Circle planted under his skin. They wanted me, but the person they really needed was Zach.

"Do you think she suspects, Cam?" he asked, meeting my eyes. "Is that why she protected me?"

And I knew what he was thinking, remembered it in perfect detail, could see it all in my head. I ran over the sequence in my mind, that moment when Caroline Goode rushed across the depths of Blackthorne to save her Zach.

And I knew he was wrong.

"She protected you," I said slowly. "Because you're her son."

Zach stood silently for a few moments, contemplating my words, trying to understand what they might mean.

"Zach," I said quietly. "The chip isn't in you either."

"How do you know?"

"Because it doesn't make any sense. If you were going to steal a chip, if you were going to put twenty years of information on it, there's no way you would put it inside a living person. A person who, with one bullet, might no longer _be _living. The purpose of the chip was to outlast my father and Mr. Solomon. Putting it inside a person would jeopardize the longevity of the information. Weren't you listening to Aunt Abby?"

"In all honesty, I was listening to everything _but_ Abigail Cameron," Zach answered. And then he paused, stepped closer to me, placed his hand on my cheek. And when he looked into my eyes, studying me, I knew what he was searching for. And I knew what he found.

"You know where it is," he whispered, awestruck. "Tell me."

And then I heard it, that one tiny noise that changed everything. The snap of a twig. The _deliberate _snap of a twig. We spun around, positioning ourselves back to back. We couldn't see them, but we knew they were there, lurking in the trees. Surrounding us. We could feel them. And we realized, in the same moment, the truth.

We were miles away from anything. And there were too many of them.

And that was when we heard it. That cool, terrifying voice. The one we both knew far too well.


	34. Chapter 34

_**Back at school, so no guarantees about the frequency of updates, but I'll try. I'm also finding that it's more challenging to write an end to this than I expected. But here's the next chapter. Thanks for reading and enjoy! Read and Review as always!**_

"Thank you, Zach," she said, stepping out of the shadows. "I knew you'd listen to your mother eventually."

I felt his eyes straining to the sides, trying to somehow find mine. But for once, I didn't need to see him to know what he was trying to tell me. That he was sorry. That he'd known they were close and hadn't wanted to tell me. But most of all, Zachary Goode wanted me to know that his mother, the leader of the Circle, was lying. And I believed him.

"I know," I breathed, barely moving my lips. The wind ripped the sound away, but I knew he'd heard. I felt it.

I felt him relax against me for an instant, then draw himself up, ready to face her. I considered our options. We could have run, but they were surrounding us. No doubt we could have take down a few in the process, but that wouldn't have made much difference, not in the long run. We wouldn't have recovered the chip. And we wouldn't have had an answer about my father. Which meant there was only one thing left to do. So I gathered my courage, pulled my strength together, and prepared to face Caroline Goode.

She walked closer, slowly but confidently, studying us as she walked.

"You're surrounded, you know, Cammie, dear. Zach led you to us, just the way he was supposed to."

Zach slipped his fingers into mine, squeezed them, and dropped my hand. And then I felt him freeze.

"The gun," he whispered, a slight shudder running through him.

Caroline Goode nodded. "Mmhm. It has a tracer, you see."

I felt the fight go out of Zach at her words, the words that meant he had, indeed, led the Circle right to us. We should have known. Should have seen it coming. But it was no one's fault and everyone's fault at the same time. And there was nothing we could do about it. I willed Zach to understand, willed him not to give up. But he didn't seem to be listening.

She was close to us then, less than a foot away, her eyes fixed hungrily on me.

"You could run," she said lightly. "But there's nowhere to go. You could fight, but there are too many of us. This'll be best for you if you just cooperate. Tell her, Zach."

I felt Zach slowly turn to face me, searching for my eyes in the darkness. But when I met them I saw something different. Beneath his defeatist body language, smoldering in his eyes, was something I hadn't expected to see. Fire. Defiance. _Hope._

He stared deep into my eyes, as if trying to light a fire in them as well, then did what he was told.

"Don't fight her, Cam," he whispered, but I knew the truth. What he was really saying was, _Don't fight her yet._

I saw her hand rise, saw a posse of goons appear and join her, but I didn't see anything else, because a blindfold was promptly secured over my eyes. In actuality, it was a sack of some sort, tied loosely around my neck so I couldn't see down, but I could still breathe. My hands were secured behind my back and tied to the cord at my neck. Then a gun was pressed into my back and I was guided forward.

We didn't walk far. That was the first thing that surprised me. There was a trunk, and we were stuffed inside and the door locked. That did not surprise me. The thing that did, however, is that we were together.

I could feel Zach's body pressed close to mine. Very close. And even though having him there was a comfort, I couldn't help but hope that we weren't going far. Because I was fairly sure there wouldn't be enough air for both of us if we were.

"Bugs," Zach whispered, as soon as the trunk slammed shut above us.

"Yeah," I answered.

"Cam…"

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," I whispered back, because the thought hadn't really slipped into my mind until that moment. "At least, one way or the other, this is the end."

"It'll be one way," Zach answered fiercely. "At least as long as I'm alive."

"Thank you," I whispered, and I meant it. "Do you know where we're going?"

"No," he answered, and I could almost hear the smirk in his voice as he calculated exactly where the car was. "But I will soon."


	35. Chapter 35

_**Writing this was a lot harder than I expected. This isn't the end yet, so don't panic, but the closer I get, the more difficult it is to write. I hope you all enjoy this one. Keep reading and reviewing. I love hearing from you.**_

Forty-three and a half minutes later, the car slowed, then stopped, and we heard footsteps as someone walked toward us.

"Southern Pennsylvania," Zach whispered, and I felt a small shiver run through him.

"You've been here before," I said quietly.

"Yeah." He didn't elaborate, but I could tell from the fear in his voice that there was a specific reason why we were there. And that that was a bad thing. But the footsteps were coming closer, and we both knew we didn't have much time left.

"I love you, Cam," he said, quietly.

"I love you too, Zach," I answered. "Thank you. For everything."

"Don't say that like this is the end."

"It could be."

"I'm not going to let that happen."

"I know."

His bound hands found mine, squeezed them one last time.

And then I felt the night air fall around us, felt the hands of Caroline Goode roughly pull me out of the trunk, press a gun into my back and lead me down a hill.

"Take him," she ordered. "I'll deal with this myself."

Part of my brain wanted to fight, To work the knots loose and attempt to slip away. But the other part knew the truth. That I desperately needed answers. And that allowing myself to be captured was the only way I was going to find them.

We didn't walk nearly as far as I'd expected before the air turned stale and I knew we were underground. Then we made two lefts, one right, one left, and two rights. And then we stopped. My hands were dragged above my head and tied to a metal pole of some sort, and the sack over my head was removed. Leaving me staring straight into the eyes of Caroline Goode.

"Hello, Cameron."

I didn't answer.

"I have to admit, your efforts impressed me. Leaving your protection detail and teaming up with a former Circle agent? That takes some guts. I commend your…bravery."

I was silent.

"By now I'm sure you know why we wanted you. Abigail Cameron, who should be dead by now, no doubt showed you that. Although, I'll admit, there was nothing more entertaining than watching them scrambling around, desperately trying to figure out why the Circle of Cavan might feel threatened by a young, untrained, rebellious teenager."

I could have told her she was wrong. That the chip she so desperately sought wasn't inside of me, or anyone for that matter. That she'd been closer to it than she'd ever imagined, all this time. But really I couldn't. Because on that chip was valuable information, information so important that others had died to protect it. And my life was no more important than any one of theirs. I didn't know exactly what information was on that chip, but I did know one thing. It was my job to protect it. And if that meant letting Caroline Goode believe the chip was planted under my skin, so be it.

"How long have you known?" I asked, quietly, attempting to stall. Desperately hoping I could get her to tell me something important. Or that I could at least postpone the torture I knew must be coming. Because as much as I wanted to tell myself otherwise, I wasn't a real spy. I was seventeen. And I was afraid.

"Since I first sent Zach to Gallagher," she sneered. "I was hoping he would bring back information that would cripple your defenses by way of jeopardizing all of your alumni. But what I got was even better. A boy who'd fallen hard for the person I wanted to get close to. Naturally, he tried to protect you. And when he and Joe discovered what I was planning, they formed a coalition to keep you safe. Making it even easier to keep track of you.

"You see, Cameron," she continued. "One teenage girl who technically doesn't exist can be difficult to follow. But surround her with professional covert operatives for protection, and she's no longer a blip on the radar. Add a hormonal teenage boy to the mix, particularly one you know very well, and the movements of the target become even easier to follow."

"You don't know him."

"Oh, I think I do," she said calmly, brushing the edge of my cheek with the back of her fingernail. "You forget that he was all mine before he met you. That I raised him. That I trained him. He's just like me, Cameron. And I know myself quite well.

"He'll try to escape soon, no doubt," she added. "But he won't succeed. No one leaves this place. Not without my permission. And he knows that. And by the time he figures out a way to reach us without dying in the process, we'll be finished here."

A shiver ran down my spine, as I remembered the images Mr. Solomon had shown us so long ago, after I'd lost Liz and Bex at the street fair. She saw it.

"I'm not a heartless woman, Cameron," she said, as if there were any way I would believe her. "I'll try to make this as painless as possible. But I do have business I need to take care of. And if you try to make it harder for me…I can't promise you anything."

She turned away from me and I took a deep breath. I was going to die. I knew it, deep down, and yet, that human part of me urged me to keep fighting. Urged me to keep talking. To stall. Even if the end result was inevitable. I couldn't give in, not yet. And if I was going to die, there were things I needed to know. Nuggets of truth she could tell me now, because I wouldn't be able to tell them to anyone else. So I played my last card, even if it sounded childish, even if I knew it wouldn't matter in the long run. Because it was all I had left.

"You told me you would take me to my father."

She froze, surprised. And then she turned around.

"Technically, I didn't, which you know perfectly well."

"You killed him, didn't you? Just like you killed Alex Goode."

She smiled, a twisted expression flashing in her eyes. "I see my son's told you of his father's mysterious disappearance. No doubt it was a moment of bonding for the two of you. I should have anticipated that you'd hit it off." Her lips twisted into a smirk as she continued. "Yes, I killed my husband. He was plotting against me, it turns out, from the very beginning. I was foolish not to see it. But he played his role well. He and Joe had gone to school together, so it didn't seem strange at all that they were constantly together. But I was becoming increasingly involved with those in leadership positions, so I knew things. I knew a CIA agent by the name of Abigail Cameron was on to one of our operations."

"Rome," I said quietly, remembering Aunt Abby's story and the bits from my father's journal about Mr. Solomon's nightmare.

"Yes," she answered. "It was supposed to be a one man op, but when we heard that Agent Cameron intended to stop us, we sent another man as well, one of our best covert assassins."

"Joe Solomon."

"Yes," Zach's mother smiled. "Joe Solomon."

"What happened?"

"He didn't kill her. Oh, he came up with a plausible excuse, of course. But she knew too much, and we needed her dead. We were tracking her, searching for the opportune moment to eliminate the threat. And then she was gone."

"She slipped off our radar," Caroline Goode continued. "And I knew it wasn't a coincidence. Because shortly after, Joe Solomon began spending a lot more time with someone else as well."

"My father."

She nodded. "Your father. I knew it was Alex. I knew he'd managed to take Abigail Cameron off of our radar to spare his friend from being forced to kill someone he was obviously attached to. It wasn't until your father became involved that I knew they were working a bigger game. And it didn't take me long to find out what that was. His body washed up in a river eventually, as soon as he was no longer useful to me."

"What did you need him for?"

"I needed to know the dynamics of the group. How I could use them all to my advantage. You see, they weren't really a threat. There was no way they could come close to bringing down the Circle. No one ever has and no one ever will. But they helped me achieve my current position. You see, Cameron, any hand can be a winner when played at the right time…"

Her voice faded off, an evil grin spreading over her face.

"Obviously that's not what you really think."

Her eyes met mine, anger building in them. And I couldn't help thinking that if I made her angry enough I could get her to kill me quickly.

"If you really thought the circle was infallible, you wouldn't need the chip. You're already the leader, so you don't need it to ingratiate yourself with the higher-ups. And if there's nothing on the chip that could possibly lead to the defeat of the Circle, why would you spend years chasing after an untrained, teenage spy who didn't even know the chip existed? Which means one of two things. Either you don't want just the chip. Or you're lying, and I'm holding the only information capable of bringing you down."

Her eyes narrowed, and she moved toward me, her hand reaching toward my body, a small knife gripped lightly between her fingers. But I took a deep breath and looked in her eyes. And instead of hers I saw Zach's. Transported my mind somewhere else. Tried to convince myself that if I moved myself to another place I wouldn't feel the pain that I knew was coming.

And then I felt her pause. Felt her take a step back. Heard her bark into her comms unit.

"What?" she snapped, and I knew that Zach was gone. That he'd escaped her after all. Because she _didn't _understand. She couldn't. Because there was a good in Zach she would never be able to claim as her own.

"You'd better," she said flatly into the unit, and the unspoken threat in her voice was more powerful than any words. Then she turned to me.

"I'll be back soon," she smiled. "And when I am, we'll finish this. I wouldn't move, if I were you, by the way. I have certain security measures in place. The results of which, if triggered, would be quite…unpleasant."

She turned and walked calmly away from me, but I called after her.

"You never answered my question."

"No, Cameron," she said, as she let a retinal scanner read her image. "I didn't."

And with that, Caroline Goode was gone.


	36. Chapter 36

_**I know it's short, but I promise there are more coming soon, they just need some editing first. Read and Review as always. Enjoy, and thanks for being such awesome fans!**_

It was 52 seconds before I felt his presence. But I didn't let those 52 seconds go to waste. Instead I managed to ascertain several crucial pieces of information. First, that the room had no security cameras. Second, that the only entrance or exit was the one Caroline Goode had left through, protected by retinal scanner. And last, but certainly not least, my hands were tied to a metal pipe with vents on it. A metal pipe with a button directly under the knot of my rope. Caroline Goode's "security measures".

And then I felt him, somewhere behind and above me. And then I heard his voice.

"Cam," he called softly, and I twisted my head as far in his direction as I thought was safe, carefully watching the knot above my head.

"Don't move," he called. "It's booby trapped."

_Well, duh, _I thought to myself. A pipe with vents that doesn't connect to the central air system can only really mean one thing: Poison.

I felt him coming closer, walking gently on the pipes that hung from the ceiling until he was finally shuffling along the one above my head.

"Did she hurt you?" he demanded, placing his hand on mine, which was still tied to the pipe.

"Not yet," I answered. "I was able to keep her talking."

"We were right?"

"About the chip?" I answered. "Yeah."

"But you know where the real one is, right?"

"Yeah," I said quietly. "It's not going to be easy to get our hands on though."

"What…" Zach started, but we could hear footsteps coming from the corridor outside the room, and he muttered a curse under his breath. "We've got to get you out of here. It's a pulley system," he explained. If you pull your hands down, you hang yourself, and if you try to pull away, your hands lift you higher. And the button releases the poisoned gas if the pressure on the rope changes."

"Great," I said, "Can you beat it?"

"You can with two people," he answered. "I'm going to pull on the one with your hands and cut it off below my hold."

"We're running out of time," I reminded.

He gripped the rope above where my hands were tied, applying pressure and then slicing the rope below his hold. I spun, caught the knife he dropped, and gripped the rope behind my neck, slicing it below my hands. Maintaining the pressure on the sensor.

"Hold on, Cam," he said. "I'm coming down."

"How do we get out without setting it off?"

"We don't," he answered. "I'll take both ends. Find something to tie to each end."

The first place I looked was the table near the center of the room. The one where Caroline Goode had gotten her knife from. And I wasn't disappointed.

It may have looked like an ordinary toolbox, but I knew there were plenty of alternative uses for every tool that was present. I settled on a heavy wrench and a power drill, weighed them in my hands for a moment, and tied each to one end of Zach's rope while he maintained the pressure. We carefully wrapped them together, so neither one would fall too far, and then we let go. And the gas didn't release.

"Now what?"

"We wait for her to come back," Zach said. "And then we get the chip. And then we run."

And then I heard it. That almost silent whooshing that meant it was all over. Zach spun, locking eyes with me.

"Zach…"

"Cammie, stay with me," he ordered, grabbing me and pulling me close. "There's an antidote, there is. And I'm sure she has it somewhere. I'm sure of it."

I didn't feel like I was dying. I felt a little dizzy, a little tired, but that was all. At least to start with.

"How long do we have?" I asked quietly.

"There's about half an hour before the full paralysis sets in," he answered, his eyes boring into mine. "But your mind is still clear, that's the torture of it. Then the real pain starts, and it can last for up to twelve hours. But you usually give in long before that."

A shudder ran through him, but something just wasn't making sense to me.

We'd beaten the pulley. It had been a solid thirty seconds between the moment when Zach had let go of the rope and the moment the gas was released.

"We beat it," I muttered, dumbfounded. "We couldn't possibly…"

"Cam," Zach said quietly, the intensity in his eyes undeniable. "_We_ didn't set it off. She did."


	37. Chapter 37

_**Hope you enjoy! Read and Review :) And thanks for spending 37 chapters with me (no, this is not the last one).**_

"Cammie, dear, I told you not to move," Caroline Goode sneered as she walked toward me. "Now you _are _in a pickle. You've been exposed to my concoction, and Zach has no doubt told you by now how…effective it is."

She paused, walking toward us. Then her eyes found Zach's, a cold hard expression meeting his burning, angry eyes.

"How sweet that you would think you could save her. You see, Cammie, I may have my flaws, but at least I raised a chivalrous young man for you to die with."

"You'd kill your own son," he snarled, his hands balling into fists beside him. "I should've known."

"Nonsense," she rolled her eyes. "I've no intention of killing _you_. I just need you out of my way. And then we'll _talk._"

Zach stared at her for a moment, his hands balled into fists. And then he took two steps backward, leaving him standing right beside the dangling rope.

I knew what was about to happen before it did. Saw the tiny flash of metal before her eyes caught the movement. Zach's hand opened, revealing the knife he'd used to cut the rope. Then he reached back and used it the same way. And when the wrench clattered to the floor, so did the other end of the rope. And the whooshing noise resumed.

"If we die, we all die together," Zach said. "You may have a few moments longer than us, but not enough to matter. We're younger, and stronger, and it should take longer to affect us than you."

"You know," she said, a thoughtful look in her eyes. "If I didn't know you were Alex's son, I'd think you were Matthew Morgan's."

"What did you mean by that?" I demanded, but she didn't answer. "_What did you mean by that?_"

"Kill me, and you'll never get to find out."

"Tell us where the antidote is, and we all live to continue this conversation," Zach answered, his eyes boring into those of his mother.

"Nice try," she laughed. "But you see, Zach, what's in it for me?"

"You get to live."

"And you get to escape. Which sort of defeats the purpose of the poison in the first place."

"But we all have a chance to get what we want. If you don't, we all die in a ridiculous amount of pain, and none of us gets what we want. You can save us all, or you can lose what you've worked your whole life for, and the thing you're looking for now."

She raised her eyebrows at her son. My limbs were getting heavy.

"Your position of power," Zach said, and I could see he was fighting the effects of the poison as well. "And Cammie's chip."

Caroline Goode's eyebrows raised further.

"There is a way to take it out of her without killing her, right?" Zach asked, and for a moment I thought he was serious.

"You'd do that," she said skeptically. "Somehow, I doubt it."

"If you don't think," Zach answered, "That I would trade her life for the chip, or my life…"

And in that one moment, I knew he was telling the truth, and so did she. And he looked me straight in the eyes as he finished.

"Then you're crazy."

"Okay," Caroline Goode nodded. "If I save us, you both get to live and I get the chip. We have a deal?"

"Yes," Zach said quietly, and even though they both knew that the other was lying, Caroline Goode walked over to the pipe, pressed her thumb against a hidden heat sensitive reader, and took the small bottle that had previously been concealed inside the pipe. And Zach snatched it from her hand before she could move. He pinned her arms behind her back and tied her to a steam pipe across the room. And then he passed me the antidote.

I felt the effects the moment the liquid hit my throat and turned to Zach. His eyes met mine with an expression somewhere between horrified and relieved. And then he pulled me close. I let him hold me for a moment, then pressed the small bottle into his hands. He took it and swallowed, then turned to his mother.

"You're going to torture me now, right?" she said quietly. "Take me down with my own poison?"

Zach's eyes narrowed, and for a moment, an evil look slid into the corners of them. And then he took a deep breath, stepped forward, and spoke.

"I'm not," he said quietly. "Because I'm not like you."

And then he tipped the liquid into his mother's mouth, and took a step back.

"But you are going to answer any questions we'd like to ask you. Because I could easily think of another way."

"What did you mean about my father?" I asked, stepping forward. "Is this how you killed him too?"

"Oh, Cameron," she smirked, shaking her head. "Haven't you figured it out yet? You see, I didn't kill your father. He did."


	38. Chapter 38

_**This should answer everyone's questions. And don't be too unhappy with me. It seemed like the most logical conclusion. Read and Review as always. You guys are the best.**_

It took a moment for the words to sink in.

He did.

He did.

_He _did.

My father killed himself. All this time we'd been searching, and he was already gone. By his own choice. Not by his own choice, I realized, but because it was the only choice he had left.

"You're going to tell us everything," Zach ordered. "The truth. Right now."

"Why?"

"Because," Zach hesitated. "Because otherwise, I _will _kill you."

"Oh, Zach," she laughed. "Don't you think it's time to stop with the empty threats?"

"You nearly killed us both tonight. Do you honestly think I would choose you over her?"

She didn't have to answer. Because we all knew the truth.

"I took Matthew Morgan into custody, intercepted him in Greece. He had a contact, an insider. He wasn't really working for us, of course, but he'd worked some cases with me in the past, before he knew I was with the Circle. We had a working relationship, one of those where you call on each other for favors every once in a while. I knew he was working with Joe. In fact, I'd known it for months. Ever since the microchip was stolen.

"They'd gotten spooked, you see, after Alex's death. Stolen a microchip, presumably on which to record their intel, so their work would be preserved in the event of their deaths. They were amassing a little too much important knowledge, and I'd been ordered to stop them. I was the only one who knew about the chip, because I was the only one who'd been keeping a close eye on Joe Solomon. My instructions were to eliminate Matthew Morgan. But I knew there was more.

"I needed that chip, and I knew I wouldn't find out where it was if he were dead. So I captured him in Greece, before he could meet up with his cutout, and brought him back to Blackthorne, the base I happened to be in charge of, mostly so I could be close to Zach. I told my superior he was dead. And then I tried to get him to tell me where the chip was.

"It was funny, you see, because Joe Solomon searched for a long time, but he didn't think to look with me. But I got tired of waiting for him to find me, and I wasn't getting anywhere with the chip. So I passed a message for us to meet and brought him to Blackthorne to scrub some files in front of Matthew Morgan's cell. They spoke for a few moments. And Joe refused to help him. A few days later, I came to see Matthew Morgan and he was dead."

"How did you find Cammie?" Zach demanded. "If her father wouldn't tell you?"

"I looked around," Caroline Goode shrugged. "I never really stopped searching for the chip. It always seemed to me that Matthew Morgan wasn't pleading for _his _life, that day with Joe. He was pleading for someone else's. There were only so many other people he would have died to protect. His daughter and wife were obviously at the top of the list. And when Joe moved to teach at Gallagher, I knew it was you," she said, her eyes meeting mine.

"You were wrong," Zach said quietly, and for a moment I wanted to beat him, but he continued. "Cammie and I don't know where the chip is, but we do know that it's not in her."

I tried very hard to stare into her face and not let my eyes wander to where I knew the chip was. I could take it from her now, I knew that. I could have reached out and it would have all been finished. Except that I knew that wouldn't be the end. Because if she knew where the chip was, we'd have to kill her. Otherwise she would hunt us forever, and this time she would know exactly what she was looking for. And I couldn't put Zach in that position. It was safer for both of us if she thought the chip was gone, lost, its location unknown by either interested party. Which meant we had to be careful. We had to keep her from learning the truth. We had to use the skills we'd spent the last five years perfecting.

"There are two things you should know as well, Zach," she said, as her eyes met his and an evil smile spread across her face. "First, I know when you're lying," she whispered, her face inches from his.

And then I saw it. That same glint of silver. Heard that same hushed sawing sound. And I leaped toward Caroline Goode as she pulled her hands from behind her back and pulled Zach against her, moving her knife to rest against his throat.

"And second, you should have searched me."


	39. Chapter 39

It was in that moment that I understood everything. I heard the words again, replayed the conversation in my head. I'd imagined this situation before. But I'd always thought it would be the other way around.

"_What would you do, Zach?" _I heard myself say. _"How would you get them to talk?"_

"_Torture someone they love."_

The worst possible situation for any spy to be in. Torn between our duty to our country, our duty to the rest of the world, and our duty to our hearts. To the people we care about. The real reason spies aren't supposed to form attachments. The real reason spies don't fall in love. Because in the end, it's safer for everyone.

But we do. We do because we're still human. Because we do so many things of questionable morality that it helps to have someone at the end of the day who loves us despite it. Or maybe even because of it. We do because if we don't, we have nothing to lose. And sometimes that's worse.

We choose to form attachments, and we have to face the consequences of that choice. The knowledge that we've put the people we care most about in the most danger. We risk our lives every day, but they're _our _lives. We've made that choice. But we also choose to endanger our families and our friends. We may play with our lives, but theirs are the ones with which we wager. And sometimes we make a bad bet. And we realize that we won't be the ones who have to suffer for it.

And I knew then, that my father had done exactly that. He'd gotten in too deep, been pulled in too far. He'd come close to taking down a major terrorist organization, an organization that might threaten the lives of innocent people on a daily basis. Closer than anyone. He had a duty to his country. He couldn't give up the location of the chip. He couldn't abandon people whose only hope was the fall of the Circle. He couldn't.

But a year is a long time to hold someone for interrogation. And he knew it was only a matter of time before they came after us. Before they used _us_ to make him talk. He'd had to choose between his life and our lives. And he had. And Joe Solomon had known. And so had Caroline Goode.

She'd used us. She'd used Zach to get to me. She'd used our relationship to put me in this position. Because she was right, she did know Zach. And she knew the he didn't know the location of the chip. But that he knew I did.

But she also knew I wouldn't let her kill him.

Although, deep down, I knew that chances were she wouldn't.

But she knew that I wouldn't take that chance. Even if he told me to. Which he did.

His eyes locked with mine as I stopped short, a moment too late with my reaction. A moment that could have made all the difference. But I didn't have time to think about that just then.

"Go, Cam," he ordered. "Get out of here. You know she won't kill me."

"There is now way out, Zachary," she muttered, pressing the edge of her knife against his skin, just enough to draw blood. Zach didn't even wince, and for an instant I caught myself wondering what he'd been through. "You know that."

"I jammed the ceiling entrance when you opened the door," Zach smirked, although his mother couldn't see it. "My mother taught me well."

"But not well enough, obviously," she snapped back. "Or else you wouldn't be here. You'd have learned that spies can't be trusted, not even the ones you think you're in love with. And you'd still be on the right side."

"I am," he said quietly. And then he shot a glance at me and sprang into action. His foot connected with his mother's knee at the same moment his hand reached for her knife. I held back, not wanting to complicate the situation as Zach and his mother struggled for the upper hand, their sheer strength the only deciding factor. I watched, ready to intervene at a moment's notice, as the knife drifted toward one, and then toward the other. And then I heard it.

As Zach forced his mother's arm behind her back and pulled her against him, the ring she'd been wearing every time I'd seen her, the ring that had first allowed me to identify my assailants after the attack on the roof, flew from her finger and clattered onto the floor. And I waited until both their backs were turned to pick it up.

I slid my hand into my pocket, weighed the metal between my fingers for just a moment. Could it really be the ring? But I knew in my heart that it was. Caroline Goode was never without it. What better place to hide sensitive information than on the finger of the leader of the Circle of Cavan. For a moment, just one, I thought of my father. And I smiled.


	40. Chapter 40

_**I'm very sorry that it's taken me so long to finish this. There is one more chapter coming after this one, but that will be the end. Thank you so much to all the kind readers who've read and reviewed my work. It's been a pleasure writing for you.**_

_**Again, I do not own the Gallagher Girls story or any of its characters. Enjoy.**_

"Cammie," Zach snarled, his eyes locking with mine. "Now."

I didn't argue. I was across the room in seconds, hoisting myself onto the pipe Zach had stood on as he'd helped me escape from his mother's booby trap what seemed like hours ago. I could see it then, the small, perfectly concealed trapdoor in the corner, out of my original line of sight and jammed open with a tiny pebble. No light came through the crack, and there was no way of knowing what might be waiting for us on the other side, but it was the only chance we had, and we had to take it.

As I reached the opening, I glanced back, and my eyes found Zach, with his mother still pinned against him, a torn expression on his face. Because the spy in both of us knew that he should kill her. And I watched as, in that second, Zach's world finally began to collapse around him. Because he couldn't. And I realized the truth. I might have the chip, I might somehow make it out of here alive. But she had won.

Zach's hand began to shake, and he clenched his fist around the knife, masking his fear with rage, as he leaned close and mumbled into his mother's ear.

"If you follow us, if you _ever _try to find either of us, or a member of our family, or a friend of ours, ever again, I _will_ kill you."

But even I could hear the lie in his voice, the man in him shaken by what he couldn't bring the spy in him to do. And yet, he pulled the knife from his mother's throat, raced across the room, and allowed me to hoist him onto the pipe beside me. He pushed through the trap door, letting us into a terrifyingly deserted corridor. And then we ran. I followed him as he raced through a maze of hallways, all of which seemed to take us farther and farther into the compound. And then, suddenly, we were running through open air.

"We have to go," Zach ordered. "Disappear and never come back. Cut all ties, go completely off the grid."

"Zach," I whispered, waiting until he looked at me. "I have the chip."

"I know," he answered, still running. "The ring."

It happened in an instant.

I felt Zach's gait hitch, felt him grab my arm and pull me behind him the same moment I saw them.

Two figures, one in front of us and one to our right, emerged from the trees.

Two shots were fired.

And there was one sharp intake of breath from the man beside me, as his grip on my arm released and he fell to the ground.

_Zach._

But I didn't have time to look, to think, to even react. Because one of the figures was already on top of me. Hands locked around my shoulders, pinning me against my attacker's chest. As the figure spun, dragging me with her, my eyes caught a glimpse of Zach's motionless form, sprawled before me on the grass. And then I couldn't fight anymore. The spy in me slowly slid to the back of my mind, and as I collapsed into my assailant, a tear slid down my face. And in that moment, I knew what it was like to have nothing to lose. Because I knew in my heart that I'd just lost everything.


	41. Chapter 41

_**This is the final chapter. I'd just like to say one more time, thank you to everyone who's been reading and reviewing. I've had so much fun writing this, and your kind reviews mean a lot to me. I can't say if I will be writing more fanfics in the future, but there are a few more one-shots in relation to the Gallagher Girls series that I'd like to write. As for another long story, I'm open to suggestions of your favorite books. I hope the end of this lives up to all of your expectations. Enjoy!**_

My assailant pushed me to the ground, but even in my present state of resignation, I knew something was wrong. The hands were firm but gentle, and as soon as I touched the ground, the figure crouched over me in a shielding posture. I could feel her eyes move, searching the area. Then she moved away from me and crouched next to Zach's body.

But with that motion, something inside of me snapped, and my instincts, training and emotions all took hold. My fist connected with my assailants jaw, and in an instant she was pinned beneath me on the ground.

"Shit, Cammie," my aunt sputtered, yanking her arms free and pushing me off her.

We were both by Zach's side in a matter of seconds, and though his eyes were closed and his face was clenched in pain, wheezing gasps were escaping from his lips. A tinge of relief slipped through my veins, but it disappeared almost instantly, when my hand touched his chest and came away soaked in his blood.

I collapsed against him, my forehead pressed against the bottom of his jaw. And then I felt his shaking hand come to rest against my back.

"Shh….Gallagher Girl…" he muttered through gritted teeth. "It's okay….I'm glad…it was me…"

"Cam, he's losing blood fast," my aunt murmured. "We have to get him out of here."

"The bullet…" I started, afraid to hear the answer.

"It's close," Aunt Abby muttered, her fingers skillfully probing Zach's chest. "But I think it's clear."

The color was rapidly draining from Zach's face as I hoisted him off the ground and half-carried half-dragged him to the safety of my aunt's vehicle. And then my brain slid away again, and the next several hours were a blur.

It wasn't until Aunt Abby and I were sitting around the hospital bed of the semi-conscious "Calvin Smith" that I really began to process what had happened.

"Cam," he whispered, his voice weak, as he slipped back to consciousness. My hand found his and squeezed it hard. "You're okay." His eyes met mine and the corners of his lips twitched upward in satisfaction, as though he'd finally accomplished something he'd wanted to do for a long time.

Then his gaze shifted to the woman in black leaning against the door, a dark bruise rising on her cheekbone. "It was her?" he asked, his eyes emotionless.

My aunt nodded. "Caroline Goode is dead," she answered, her eyes darting between me and Zach. "I need to step out for a second," she said matter-of-factly. And then she turned on her heel and quickly left the room, leaving us alone to process her statement.

I don't know what I expected from Zach upon hearing that not only had his mother tried to kill me and almost killed him in the process, but also that my aunt had shot her. Whatever I'd expected, it wasn't the reaction I got. Instead, he held my hand to his cheek and smiled up at me.

"You're safe now," he whispered. "Does Abby know?"

I shook my head, fingering the ring in my pocket. I didn't know what might be on the chip, what answers we might find, what information might help us to eliminate the powerful terrorist organization in its entirety. But I did know one thing for certain. We would try, together. And one day, I knew that we would bring down the organization that had somehow shattered both our lives. But that day was a long way off. And if there's one thing you learn as a spy, it's that the future is uncertain. But the present, that's real. You have to live each moment as though it could be your last. Because in our world, it really could.

"I almost lost you," I whispered, resting my head against Zach's chest.

"I wasn't going anywhere, Cam," he answered quietly. "You see, I have something to live for now. And she's incredible."

And as I lifted my head to gaze at the man beside me, the man who'd followed me around the country, the man who'd fought for me against his own mother, the man who, only a few hours before had been willing to sacrifice his life for mine, I knew that even in the uncertainty of the future, one more thing was an absolute truth.

"I love you, Zach," I whispered. And for one moment, I let all thoughts of the Circle slide from my brain. Because I too had someone to live for.


End file.
